A Schema of Possible Negative Effects of Advanced Driver Assistant Systems

The purpose of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) is to enhance traffic safety and efficiency. ADAS can be considered as a (still incomplete) collection of systems and subsystems towards a fully automated highway system, such as autonomous cars. However, as many researchers argue, in assessing the benefits of ADAS it has to be taken into account that any gains in terms of security may be again reduced by the fact they affect the drivers\u27 behavior. In this paper, we introduce a schema of possible negative effects of advanced driver assistant systems according to which consequences of a system failure largely depend on the magnitude of over-reliance. Based on that schema, we itemize hypotheses on possible behavioral effects of a specific ADAS type, namely local danger alerts

Anti-collision systems in tunneling to improve effectiveness and safety in a system-quality approach: A review of the state of the art

Tunnelling and underground construction operations are often characterized by critical safety issues mainly due to poor visibility and blind spots around large vehicles and equipment. This can lead to collisions between vehicles or between vehicles and pedestrians or structural elements, causing accidents and fatalities. To improve the OS&H conditions, it is important to investigate the possible introduction of innovative techniques and technologies to reduce the occurrences and consequences of shared spaces (spaces used by both vehicles and pedestrians). For this reason, research was conducted to investigate the possible use of different technologies of anti-collision systems in tunnelling operations. First, to achieve this goal, an extensive review of the literature was carried out in accordance with the PRISMA statement to select the current techniques and technologies used by general anti-collision systems in civil and mining construction sites. Then, the operating principles, the relative advantages and disadvantages, combinations, and costs were examined for each of these. Eight types of systems and many examples of applications of anti-collision systems in underground environments were identified as a result of the analysis of the literature. Generally, it was noted that the anti-collision techniques available have found limited application in the excavation sites of underground civil works up to the present day, though the improvement in terms of safety and efficiency would be considerable

Fast pedestrian detection from a moving vehicle

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-71).This paper presents a method of real-time multi-modal pedestrian detection from a moving vehicle. The system uses both intensity and thermal images captured from cameras mounted at the front of the vehicle to train cascades of classifiers, which results in a detector that is able to detect a large percentage of pedestrians with very few false positives. The system has also been tested with inputs of high-resolution intensity images along with low-resolution thermal images, showing that the addition of even a low-resolution thermal camera may return better pedestrian detection results than using only intensity information alone.by Shuang You.M.Eng

Visual Clutter Study for Pedestrian Using Large Scale Naturalistic Driving Data

Some of the pedestrian crashes are due to driver’s late or difficult perception of pedestrian’s appearance. Recognition of pedestrians during driving is a complex cognitive activity. Visual clutter analysis can be used to study the factors that affect human visual search efficiency and help design advanced driver assistant system for better decision making and user experience. In this thesis, we propose the pedestrian perception evaluation model which can quantitatively analyze the pedestrian perception difficulty using naturalistic driving data. An efficient detection framework was developed to locate pedestrians within large scale naturalistic driving data. Visual clutter analysis was used to study the factors that may affect the driver’s ability to perceive pedestrian appearance. The candidate factors were explored by the designed exploratory study using naturalistic driving data and a bottom-up image-based pedestrian clutter metric was proposed to quantify the pedestrian perception difficulty in naturalistic driving data. Based on the proposed bottom-up clutter metrics and top-down pedestrian appearance based estimator, a Bayesian probabilistic pedestrian perception evaluation model was further constructed to simulate the pedestrian perception process

Risk analysis of autonomous vehicle and its safety impact on mixed traffic stream

In 2016, more than 35,000 people died in traffic crashes, and human error was the reason for 94% of these deaths. Researchers and automobile companies are testing autonomous vehicles in mixed traffic streams to eliminate human error by removing the human driver behind the steering wheel. However, recent autonomous vehicle crashes while testing indicate the necessity for a more thorough risk analysis. The objectives of this study were (1) to perform a risk analysis of autonomous vehicles and (2) to evaluate the safety impact of these vehicles in a mixed traffic stream. The overall research was divided into two phases: (1) risk analysis and (2) simulation of autonomous vehicles. Risk analysis of autonomous vehicles was conducted using the fault tree method. Based on failure probabilities of system components, two fault tree models were developed and combined to predict overall system reliability. It was found that an autonomous vehicle system could fail 158 times per one-million miles of travel due to either malfunction in vehicular components or disruption from infrastructure components. The second phase of this research was the simulation of an autonomous vehicle, where change in crash frequency after autonomous vehicle deployment in a mixed traffic stream was assessed. It was found that average travel time could be reduced by about 50%, and 74% of conflicts, i.e., traffic crashes, could be avoided by replacing 90% of the human drivers with autonomous vehicles

Design and Evaluation of Measurement Instrumentation used for High Energy Tibia Impacts on Fresh Post Mortem Human Subjects

Injury to the medial collateral ligament (MCL) and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) are common when knees are subjected to loading from the lateral direction. These types of injuries occur often in sports and are also common in vehicle-pedestrian collisions. Previously, the Injury Biomechanics Research Laboratory (IBRL) at The Ohio State University has developed instrumentation for anterior tibia impacts, which included instrumentation to measure the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) stretch. The objective of this research was to take knowledge gleamed from the frontal testing to develop an instrumentation technique for lateral impact testing of the knee, focusing on MCL and ACL stretch and injury. The goal of this study was to develop and verify instrumentation that can be used in future studies on ligament tears and avulsions on post-mortem human subjects (PMHS). This research also looked to accurately measure the angle between the tibia and the femur during impact and identify the time of injury for both ligament and bone failures. Instrumentation techniques using micro-differential variable reluctance transducers (Micro-DVRTs) were used to measure stretch in the ligaments due to the confined space within the knee joint. Accelerometers, angular rate sensors, high-speed cameras, and load cells were used to determine the angle of the femur with respect to the tibia and to measure force of impact. The initial trials included 4 PMHS denuded legs being laterally rotated by gravity until the thigh impacted a load plate causing loading across the knee. During the tests, all mounted instrumentation on the leg remained fixed and recorded the motion of the leg and the stretch of the ligaments. From these initial tests, suturing the DVRT barbs to the ACL provided repeatable ACL displacement measurements. When the MCL is well defined, suturing the DVRT barbs to the MCL also provided repeatable MCL displacement measurements. With both MCL and ACL DVRT signals, the time of injury can be determined accurately. It was also determined that angular velocity may be a predictor of ligament injury that could be used in future work if more trials are performed and found to support this hypothesis.No embarg