A heuristic model for pedestrian intention estimation

Understanding pedestrian behaviour and controlling interactions with pedestrians is of critical importance for autonomous vehicles, but remains a complex and challenging problem. This study infers pedestrian intent during possible road-crossing interactions, to assist autonomous vehicle decisions to yield or not yield when approaching them, and tests a simple heuristic model of intent on pedestrian-vehicle trajectory data for the first time. It relies on a heuristic approach based on the observed positions of the agents over time. The method can predict pedestrian crossing intent, crossing or stopping, with 96% accuracy by the time the pedestrian reaches the curbside, on the standard Daimler pedestrian dataset. This result is important in demarcating scenarios which have a clear winner and can be predicted easily with the simple heuristic, from those which may require more complex game-theoretic models to predict and control

Predictive analytics applied to firefighter response, a practical approach

Time is a crucial factor for the outcome of emergencies, especially those that involve human lives. This paper looks at Lisbon’s firefighter’s occurrences and presents a model,based on city characteristics and climacteric data, to predict whether there will be an occurrence at a certain location, according to the weather forecasts. In this study three algorithms were considered, Logistic Regression, Decision Tree and Random Forest.Measured by the AUC, the best performant modelwasa random forestwith random under-sampling at 0.68. This model was well adjusted across the city and showed that precipitation and size of the subsection are themost relevant featuresin predicting firefighter’s occurrences.The work presented here has clear implications on the firefighter’s decision-makingregarding vehicle allocation, as now they can make an informed decision considering the predicted occurrences

Multi-Sensor Data Fusion for Robust Environment Reconstruction in Autonomous Vehicle Applications

In autonomous vehicle systems, understanding the surrounding environment is mandatory for an intelligent vehicle to make every decision of movement on the road. Knowledge about the neighboring environment enables the vehicle to detect moving objects, especially irregular events such as jaywalking, sudden lane change of the vehicle etc. to avoid collision. This local situation awareness mostly depends on the advanced sensors (e.g. camera, LIDAR, RADAR) added to the vehicle. The main focus of this work is to formulate a problem of reconstructing the vehicle environment using point cloud data from the LIDAR and RGB color images from the camera. Based on a widely used point cloud registration tool such as iterated closest point (ICP), an expectation-maximization (EM)-ICP technique has been proposed to automatically mosaic multiple point cloud sets into a larger one. Motion trajectories of the moving objects are analyzed to address the issue of irregularity detection. Another contribution of this work is the utilization of fusion of color information (from RGB color images captured by the camera) with the three-dimensional point cloud data for better representation of the environment. For better understanding of the surrounding environment, histogram of oriented gradient (HOG) based techniques are exploited to detect pedestrians and vehicles.;Using both camera and LIDAR, an autonomous vehicle can gather information and reconstruct the map of the surrounding environment up to a certain distance. Capability of communicating and cooperating among vehicles can improve the automated driving decisions by providing extended and more precise view of the surroundings. In this work, a transmission power control algorithm is studied along with the adaptive content control algorithm to achieve a more accurate map of the vehicle environment. To exchange the local sensor data among the vehicles, an adaptive communication scheme is proposed that controls the lengths and the contents of the messages depending on the load of the communication channel. The exchange of this information can extend the tracking region of a vehicle beyond the area sensed by its own sensors. In this experiment, a combined effect of power control, and message length and content control algorithm is exploited to improve the map\u27s accuracy of the surroundings in a cooperative automated vehicle system

Using Road Topology to Improve Cyclist Path Prediction

We learn motion models for cyclist path prediction on real-world tracks obtained from a moving vehicle, and propose to exploit the local road topology to obtain better predictive distributions. The tracks are extracted from the Tsinghua-Daimler Cyclist Benchmark for cyclist detection, and corrected for vehicle egomotion. Tracks are then spatially aligned to local curves and crossings in the road. We study a standard approach for path prediction in the literature based on Kalman Filters, as well as a mixture of specialized filters related to specific road orientations at junctions. Our experiments demonstrate an improved prediction accuracy (up to 20% on sharp turns) of mixing specialized motion models for canonical directions, and prior knowledge on the road topology. The new track data complements the existing video, disparity and annotation data o

Vulnerable road users and connected autonomous vehicles interaction: a survey

There is a group of users within the vehicular traffic ecosystem known as Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs). VRUs include pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, among others. On the other hand, connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) are a set of technologies that combines, on the one hand, communication technologies to stay always ubiquitous connected, and on the other hand, automated technologies to assist or replace the human driver during the driving process. Autonomous vehicles are being visualized as a viable alternative to solve road accidents providing a general safe environment for all the users on the road specifically to the most vulnerable. One of the problems facing autonomous vehicles is to generate mechanisms that facilitate their integration not only within the mobility environment, but also into the road society in a safe and efficient way. In this paper, we analyze and discuss how this integration can take place, reviewing the work that has been developed in recent years in each of the stages of the vehicle-human interaction, analyzing the challenges of vulnerable users and proposing solutions that contribute to solving these challenges.This work was partially funded by the Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness of Spain under Grant: Supervision of drone fleet and optimization of commercial operations flight plans, PID2020-116377RB-C21.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Optimization of firefighter response with predictive analytics : practical application to Lisbon, Portugal

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceTime is a crucial factor for the outcome of emergencies, especially those that involve human lives. This paper looks at Lisbon’s firefighter’s occurrences and presents a model, based on city characteristics and climacteric data, to predict whether there will be an occurrence at a certain location, according to the weather forecasts. In this study three algorithms were considered, Logistic Regression, Decision Tree and Random Forest, as well as four techniques to balance the data – random over-sampling, SMOTE, random under-sampling and Near Miss –, which were compared to the baseline, the imbalanced data. Measured by the AUC, the best performant model was a random forest with random under-sampling at 0.68. This model was well adjusted across the city and showed that precipitation and size of the subsection are the most relevant features in predicting firefighter’s occurrences. The work presented here has clear implications on the firefighter’s decision-making regarding vehicle allocation, as now they can make an informed decision considering the predicted occurrences

Exploring the Injury Severity Risk Factors in Fatal Crashes with Neural Network

A better understanding of circumstances contributing to the severity outcome of traffic crashes is an important goal of road safety studies. An in-depth crash injury severity analysis is vital for the proactive implementation of appropriate mitigation strategies. This study proposes an improved feed-forward neural network (FFNN) model for predicting injury severity associated with individual crashes using three years (2017–2019) of crash data collected along 15 rural highways in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). A total of 12,566 crashes were recorded during the study period with a binary injury severity outcome (fatal or non-fatal injury) for the variable to be predicted. FFNN architecture with back-propagation (BP) as a training algorithm, logistic as activation function, and six number of hidden neurons in the hidden layer yielded the best model performance. Results of model prediction for the test data were analyzed using different evaluation metrics such as overall accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. Prediction results showed the adequacy and robust performance of the proposed method. A detailed sensitivity analysis of the optimized NN was also performed to show the impact and relative influence of different predictor variables on resulting crash injury severity. The sensitivity analysis results indicated that factors such as traffic volume, average travel speeds, weather conditions, on-site damage conditions, road and vehicle type, and involvement of pedestrians are the most sensitive variables. The methods applied in this study could be used in big data analysis of crash data, which can serve as a rapid-useful tool for policymakers to improve highway safety

Point Cloud Processing Algorithms for Environment Understanding in Intelligent Vehicle Applications

Understanding the surrounding environment including both still and moving objects is crucial to the design and optimization of intelligent vehicles. In particular, acquiring the knowledge about the vehicle environment could facilitate reliable detection of moving objects for the purpose of avoiding collisions. In this thesis, we focus on developing point cloud processing algorithms to support intelligent vehicle applications. The contributions of this thesis are three-fold.;First, inspired by the analogy between point cloud and video data, we propose to formulate a problem of reconstructing the vehicle environment (e.g., terrains and buildings) from a sequence of point cloud sets. Built upon existing point cloud registration tool such as iterated closest point (ICP), we have developed an expectation-maximization (EM)-like technique that can automatically mosaic multiple point cloud sets into a larger one characterizing the still environment surrounding the vehicle.;Second, we propose to utilize the color information (from color images captured by the RGB camera) as a supplementary source to the three-dimensional point cloud data. Such joint color and depth representation has the potential of better characterizing the surrounding environment of a vehicle. Based on the novel joint RGBD representation, we propose training a convolution neural network on color images and depth maps generated from the point cloud data.;Finally, we explore a sensor fusion method that combines the results given by a Lidar based detection algorithm and vehicle to everything (V2X) communicated data. Since Lidar and V2X respectively characterize the environmental information from complementary sources, we propose to get a better localization of the surrounding vehicles by a linear sensor fusion method. The effectiveness of the proposed sensor fusion method is verified by comparing detection error profiles

Recent Progress in Urbanisation Dynamics Research

This book is dedicated to urbanization, which is observed every day, as well as the methods and techniques of monitoring and analyzing this phenomenon. In the 21st century, urbanization has gained momentum, and the awareness of the significance and influence of this phenomenon on our lives make us take a closer look at it not only with curiosity, but also great attention. There are numerous reasons for this, among which the economy is of special significance, but it also has many results, namely, economic, social, and environmental. First of all, it is a spatial phenomenon, as all of the aspects can be placed in space. We would therefore like to draw special attention to the results of urbanization seen on the Earth's surface and in the surrounding space. The urbanization–land relation seems obvious, but is also interesting and multi-layered. The development of science and technology provides a lot of new tools for observing urbanization, as well as the analyses and inference of the phenomenon in space. This book is devoted to in-depth analysis of past, present and future urbanization processes all over the world. We present the latest trends of research that use experience in the widely understood geography of the area. This book is focused on multidisciplinary phenomenon, i.e., urbanization, with the use of the satellite and photogrammetric observation technologies and GIS analyses

Statistical Investigation of Road and Railway Hazardous Materials Transportation Safety

Transportation of hazardous materials (hazmat) in the United States (U.S.) constituted 22.8% of the total tonnage transported in 2012 with an estimated value of more than 2.3 billion dollars. As such, hazmat transportation is a significant economic activity in the U.S. However, hazmat transportation exposes people and environment to the infrequent but potentially severe consequences of incidents resulting in hazmat release. Trucks and trains carried 63.7% of the hazmat in the U.S. in 2012 and are the major foci of this dissertation. The main research objectives were 1) identification and quantification of the effects of different factors on occurrence and consequences of hazmat-related incidents, towards identifying effective policies and countermeasures for improving safety and; 2) quantifying components of risk of hazmat transportation for costs prediction, planning purposes, or short-term decision-making. A comprehensive review of literature, study framework, and available data led to identification of six foci for this dissertation: 1) estimation of hazmat release statistical models for railroad incidents; 2) estimation of rollover and hazmat release statistical models for Cargo Tank Truck (CTT) crashes; 3) analyzing hazmat-involved crashes at highway-rail grade crossings (HRGCs); 4) model-based and non-model-based methods for classifying hazmat release from trains and CTTs; 5) estimation of macroscopic-level statistical models for frequency and severity of rail-based crude oil release incidents; and 6) estimation of statistical models for types and consequences of rail-based crude oil release incidents. Some of the findings of this research include: train derailments increased hazmat release probability more than other incident types; non-collision CTT crashes were more likely to result in rollovers, while rolling over increased the likelihood of hazmat release; at HRGCs, flashing signal lights were associated with lower hazmat release probability from trucks; increase in volume and distance of crude oil shipped from one state to another led to greater frequency and severity of incidents between the two states; and in rail-based crude oil release incidents, non-accident releases were associated with higher probability of gas dispersion, and lower probability of fire and explosion. Based on the results, recommendations regarding policies and countermeasures for improving safety are provided. Advisor: Aemal Khatta