A Steering Wheel Mounted Grip Sensor: Design, Development and Evaluation

Department of Human Factors EngineeringDriving is a commonplace but safety critical daily activity for billions of people. It remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, particularly in younger adults. In the last decades, a wide range of technologies, such as intelligent braking or speed regulating systems, have been integrated into vehicles to improve safetyannually decreasing death rates testify to their success. A recent research focus in this area has been in the development of systems that sense human states or activities during driving. This is valuable because human error remains a key reason underlying many vehicle accidents and incidents. Technologies that can intervene in response to information sensed about a driver may be able to detect, predict and ultimately prevent problems before they progress into accidents, thus avoiding the occurrence of critical situations rather than just mitigating their consequences. Commercial examples of this kind of technology include systems that monitor driver alertness or lane holding and prompt drivers who are sleepy or drifting off-lane. More exploratory research in this area has sought to capture emotional state or stress/workload levels via physiological measurements of Heart Rate Variability (HRV), Electrocardiogram (ECG) and Electroencephalogram (EEG), or behavioral measurements of eye gaze or face pose. Other research has monitored explicitly user actions, such as head pose or foot movements to infer intended actions (such as overtaking or lane change) and provide automatic assessments of the safety of these future behaviors ??? for example, providing a timely warning to a driver who is planning to overtake about a vehicle in his or her blind spot. Researchers have also explored how sensing hands on the wheel can be used to infer a driver???s presence, identity or emotional state. This thesis extends this body of work through the design, development and evaluation of a steering wheel sensor platform that can directly detect a driver???s hand pose all around a steering wheel. This thesis argues that full steering hand pose is a potentially rich source of information about a driver???s intended actions. For example, it proposes a link between hand posture on the wheel and subsequent turning or lane change behavior. To explore this idea, this thesis describes the construction of a touch sensor in the form of a steering wheel cover. This cover integrates 32 equidistantly spread touch sensing electrodes (11.250 inter-sensor spacing) in the form of conductive ribbons (0.2" wide and 0.03" thick). Data from each ribbons is captured separately via a set of capacitive touch sensor microcontrollers every 64 ms. We connected this hardware platform to an OpenDS, an open source driving simulator and ran two studies capturing hand pose during a sequential lane change task and a slalom task. We analyzed the data to determine whether hand pose is a useful predictor of future turning behavior. For this we classified a 5-lane road into 4 turn sizes and used machine-learning recognizers to predict the future turn size from the change in hand posture in terms of hand movement properties from the early driving data. Driving task scenario of the first experiment was not appropriately matched with the real life turning task therefore we modified the scenario with more appropriate task in the second experiments. Class-wise prediction of the turn sizes for both experiments didn???t show good accuracy, however prediction accuracy was improved when the classes were reduced into two classes from four classes. In the experiment 2 turn sizes were overlapped between themselves, which made it very difficult to distinguish them. Therefore, we did continuous prediction as well and the prediction accuracy was better than the class-wise prediction system for the both experiments. In summary, this thesis designed, developed and evaluated a combined hardware and software system that senses the steering behavior of a driver by capturing grip pose. We assessed the value of this information via two studies that explored the relationship between wheel grip and future turning behaviors. The ultimate outcome of this study can inform the development of in car sensing systems to support safer driving.ope

Safety Assessment of Road Vehicle in Crosswind Considering Driver Behavior

With expansion of the economy, more and more highway networks extend to coastal areas and mountain valley areas. Vehicles will be exposed to strong crosswinds when driven on these highway roads, especially in hurricane season and in winter in these two different topographic areas. Strong crosswinds threaten the safety of transportation infrastructure and passing vehicles in forms of vehicle accidents that usually result in traffic blockage and driver injury, posing negative effects on economic growth. This dissertation aimed to evaluate the vehicle safety when running through crosswinds in consideration of driver behaviors. Firstly, the aerodynamic characteristics of road vehicles were identified using computational fluid dynamic method. Aerodynamic coefficients of a high-side lorry running in crosswinds using both traditional resultant-wind velocity method and relative-motion approach were compared. In addition, the aerodynamic coefficients of multiple types of vehicles were investigated. The curves of aerodynamic coefficients for different vehicle types against wind yaw angles were obtained. Secondly, an experimental investigation on the vehicle performance and driver behavior was conducted by taking advantage of the LSU’s driving simulator. This study revealed the repeatability of driver behavior and the effect of crosswind speeds on the vehicle performance and drivers’ behavior through a statistical analysis. More scenarios were considered, such as driving in windy-rainy conditions. A regression model of the steering wheel angle turned by drivers was obtained. Finally, safety assessment of vehicles was performed based on an improved wind-vehicle-bridge coupled system and considering driver’s behavior using a series of driver behavior models. For different types of road vehicles, rigid frame vehicle model and flexible frame vehicle model were developed. Accident criteria of lateral side slip, rotational deviation, and rollover were considered. To investigate the influence of driver models, four driver models were considered in different integration methods. Results between cases from different driver models were compared

Vision for Scene Understanding

This manuscript covers my recent research on vision algorithms for scene understanding, articulated in 3 research axes: 3D Vision, Weakly supervised vision, and Vision and physics. At the core of the most recent works is weakly-supervised learning and physics-embodied vision, which address short comings of supervised learning that requires large amount of data. The use of more physically grounded algorithms appears evidently beneficial as both robots and humans naturally evolve in a 3D physical world. On the other hand, accounting for physics knowledge reflects important cue about lighting and weather conditions of the scene central in my work. Physics-informed machine learning is not only beneficial for increased interpretability but also to compensate labels and data scarcity

LiDAR-based Weather Detection: Automotive LiDAR Sensors in Adverse Weather Conditions

Technologische Verbesserungen erhöhen den Automatisierungsgrad von Fahrzeugen. Der natürliche Schritt ist dabei, den Fahrer dort zu unterstützen, wo er es am meisten wünscht: bei schlechtem Wetter. Das Wetter beeinflusst alle Sensoren, die zur Wahrnehmung der Umgebung verwendet werden, daher ist es entscheidend, diese Effekte zu berücksichtigen und abzuschwächen. Die vorliegende Dissertation konzentriert sich auf die gerade entstehende Technologie der automobilen Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)-Sensoren und trägt zur Entwicklung von autonomen Fahrzeugen bei, die in der Lage sind, unter verschiedenen Wetterbedingungen zu fahren. Die Grundlage ist der erste LiDAR-Punktwolken-Datensatz mit dem Schwerpunkt auf schlechte Wetterbedingungen, welcher punktweise annonatatierte Wetterinformationen enthält, während er unter kontrollierten Wetterbedingungen aufgezeichnet wurde. Dieser Datensatz wird durch eine neuartige Wetter-Augmentation erweitert, um realistische Wettereffekte erzeugen zu können. Ein neuartiger Ansatz zur Klassifizierung des Wetterzustands und der erste CNN-basierte Entrauschungsalgorithmus werden entwickelt. Das Ergebnis ist eine genaue Vorhersage des Wetterstatus und eine Verbesserung der Punktwolkenqualität. Kontrollierte Umgebungen unter verschiedenen Wetterbedingungen ermöglichen die Evaluierung der oben genannten Ansätze und liefern wertvolle Informationen für das automatisierte und autonome Fahren

Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things 3/E

Among species, human beings seem to be a peculiar lot. Why is it, for example, that certain members of the species routinely put their survival at risk by puffing on a small stick of nicotine? Why is it that some females of the species make locomotion difficult for themselves by donning high-heel footwear? Are there hidden or unconscious reasons behind such strange behaviors that seem to be so utterly counter-instinctual, so to speak? For no manifest biological reason, humanity has always searched, and continues to search, for a purpose to its life. Is it this search that has led it to engage in such bizarre behaviors as smoking and wearing high heels? And is it the reason behind humanity’s invention of myths, art, rituals, languages, mathematics, science, and all the other truly remarkable things that set it apart from all other species? Clearly, Homo sapiens appears to be unique in the fact that many of its behaviors are shaped by forces other than the instincts. The discipline that endeavors to understand these forces is known as semiotics. Relatively unknown in comparison to, say, philosophy or psychology, semiotics probes the human condition in its own peculiar way, by unraveling the meanings of the signs that undergird not only the wearing of high-heel shoes, but also the construction of words, paintings, sculptures, and the like

Aeronautical engineering: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 289)

This bibliography lists 792 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in Mar. 1993. Subject coverage includes: design, construction and testing of aircraft and aircraft engines; aircraft components, equipment, and systems; ground support systems; and theoretical and applied aspects of aerodynamics and general fluid dynamics

Droplet interactions with micro- and nanostructured surfaces for advanced heat transfer applications

Droplets. Droplets are omnipresent: from rain droplets, over ink-jet printers, to advanced heat exchangers and thermal management systems. But in order to use droplets to our advantage, we need to study and understand how they interact with surfaces. Throughout this dissertation, I use optical photography and high speed imaging to characterize droplet-solid interactions. When liquid water comes into contact with a hydrophobic surface, such as Teflon, it forms individual droplets. The contact angle that the droplet develops with the surface is well understood in an air environment. However, when placed in a pure water vapor environment, I show that contact angles can decrease by up to 10% as compared to those in air. At the same time, on micro- and nanostructured surfaces, the vapor environment has little effect on the static contact angles. Based on Young’s equation and Fowke’s concept of the additivity of surface tensions, I propose that the decrease in contact angle on flat hydrophobic Teflon arises from molecular water vapor adsorption to the Teflon surface. In many engineering applications, the use of metals, as opposed to silicon and polymers, is desired to render surfaces water and oil repellent. I introduce micro electrical discharge machining (mEDM) as a viable tool to fabricate scalable micro-mushrooms (~ 100 µm) on steel blocks (~ 1 cm). I show that narrow micro-mushrooms with wide spacing give the highest contact angles (θA/θR = 170°/151°) and droplet mobility with water, while microstructures with flat tops, strong re-entrant curvature and smaller gap widths are necessary to support non-wetting droplets with liquids with a low surface tension, such as oils and alcohols (θA/θR = 148°/74° with isopropanol). After studying static and quasi-static droplet-surface interactions, I continued characterizing droplet dynamics during impact on micro- and nanostructured surfaces. Contact times during impact on rigid surfaces are constant over a wide range of impact speeds, and are thus difficult to control. I show that contact times of water droplets impacting elastic superhydrophobic surfaces can be reduced by up to 50% when compared to impact on rigid surfaces due to a springboard effect, during which droplet lifts off the surface prior to fully recoiling. Upon impact, the droplet excites the substrate to oscillate, while during liquid retraction, the substrate imparts vertical momentum back to the droplet, causing early droplet lift-off with reduced contact time. Through detailed experimental and theoretical analysis, I show that this novel springboarding phenomenon is achieved for a specific range of Weber numbers (We > 40) and droplet Froude numbers during spreading (Fr > 1). For droplets impacting vibrating superhydrophobic surfaces (60-320 Hz), I show that vibration frequency and phase at impact strongly influence the contact time of the bouncing droplets. I introduce the concept of a frequency-dependent critical impact phase at which contact times transition from a minimum (tc ≈ 0.5 tc,th) to a maximum (tc ≈ 1.6 tc,th). Through semi-empirical modeling I show that average contact times can be actively controlled and varied by controlling the substrate vibration frequency. Finally, I studied the distribution of droplet sizes during dropwise condensation on liquid infused surfaces (LIS, or SLIPS) with a wide range of lubricant viscosities (12 – 2717 cSt). Through analysis of >1000 individual images I show that the steady-state droplet size distribution is independent of lubricant viscosity. I further developed a numerical model to estimate the effect of sweeping and sweeping frequency on the average heat transfer on a large vertical plate, and conclude that only uncommonly high sweeping rates would affect heat transfer rates significantly. I estimate average heat transfer rates during dropwise condensation on SLIPS to be 10-15 times greater than during traditional filmwise condensation, and provide a design framework for optimal heat transfer rates based on surface solid fraction and coating thickness. Overall, this dissertation presents new insights into droplet-solid interactions during traditional wetting, droplet impact, and dropwise condensation, and provides a base line for future research and the development of industrial applications for droplet-based thermal management systems

Ecocinema Theory and Practice 2

This second volume builds on the initial groundwork laid by Ecocinema Theory and Practice by examining the ways in which ecocritical cinema studies have matured and proliferated over the last decade, opening whole new areas of study and research. Featuring fourteen new essays organized into three sections around the themes of cinematic materialities, discourses, and communities, the volume explores a variety of topics within ecocinema studies from examining specifc national and indigenous flm contexts to discussing ecojustice, environmental production studies, flm festivals, and political ecology. The breadth of the contributions exemplifes how ecocinema scholars worldwide have sought to overcome the historical legacy of binary thinking and intellectual norms and are working to champion new ecocritical, intersectional, decolonial, queer, feminist, Indigenous, vitalist, and other emergent theories and cinematic prac-tices. The collection also demonstrates the unique ways that cinema studies scholarship is actively addressing environmental injustice and the climate crisis. This book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of ecocritical flm and media studies, production studies, cultural studies, and environmental studies.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1181/thumbnail.jp