A Learning-Based Framework for Two-Dimensional Vehicle Maneuver Prediction over V2V Networks

Situational awareness in vehicular networks could be substantially improved utilizing reliable trajectory prediction methods. More precise situational awareness, in turn, results in notably better performance of critical safety applications, such as Forward Collision Warning (FCW), as well as comfort applications like Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC). Therefore, vehicle trajectory prediction problem needs to be deeply investigated in order to come up with an end to end framework with enough precision required by the safety applications' controllers. This problem has been tackled in the literature using different methods. However, machine learning, which is a promising and emerging field with remarkable potential for time series prediction, has not been explored enough for this purpose. In this paper, a two-layer neural network-based system is developed which predicts the future values of vehicle parameters, such as velocity, acceleration, and yaw rate, in the first layer and then predicts the two-dimensional, i.e. longitudinal and lateral, trajectory points based on the first layer's outputs. The performance of the proposed framework has been evaluated in realistic cut-in scenarios from Safety Pilot Model Deployment (SPMD) dataset and the results show a noticeable improvement in the prediction accuracy in comparison with the kinematics model which is the dominant employed model by the automotive industry. Both ideal and nonideal communication circumstances have been investigated for our system evaluation. For non-ideal case, an estimation step is included in the framework before the parameter prediction block to handle the drawbacks of packet drops or sensor failures and reconstruct the time series of vehicle parameters at a desirable frequency

A Learning-based Stochastic MPC Design for Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control to Handle Interfering Vehicles

Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communication has a great potential to improve reaction accuracy of different driver assistance systems in critical driving situations. Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC), which is an automated application, provides drivers with extra benefits such as traffic throughput maximization and collision avoidance. CACC systems must be designed in a way that are sufficiently robust against all special maneuvers such as cutting-into the CACC platoons by interfering vehicles or hard braking by leading cars. To address this problem, a Neural- Network (NN)-based cut-in detection and trajectory prediction scheme is proposed in the first part of this paper. Next, a probabilistic framework is developed in which the cut-in probability is calculated based on the output of the mentioned cut-in prediction block. Finally, a specific Stochastic Model Predictive Controller (SMPC) is designed which incorporates this cut-in probability to enhance its reaction against the detected dangerous cut-in maneuver. The overall system is implemented and its performance is evaluated using realistic driving scenarios from Safety Pilot Model Deployment (SPMD).Comment: 10 pages, Submitted as a journal paper at T-I

What drives the Acceptability of Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA)? Modeling acceptability of ISA

6370 individuals responded in Belgium (Flanders region) and 1158 persons in The Netherlands on a web-survey about ISA. A model has been estimated, by using SEM, to find out which predefined indicators would be relevant to define the acceptability of ISA. Background factors, contextual issues, and ISA-device related factors were used as indicators to predict the level of acceptability. The factors that were used in the model were based on the methods used in past ISA trials, acceptance and accep-tability theories and models. The effectiveness of ISA (1), equity (2), effectiveness of ITS (3) and personal and social aims (4), were the four variables that had the largest total effect on the acceptability of ISA. Effectiveness was found a relevant predictor for acceptance in many trials (Morsink et al, 2006). The model showed that the willingness of drivers to adopt ISA increases if they experience the system in practice: if people are convinced that ISA will assist to maintain the legal speed in different speed zones, the acceptance will be higher (Van der Pas et al., 2008). Hence, trials seem a good way to demonstrate the effectiveness of ISA. However, trials typically do not allow many people to try out ISA. Therefore, communi-cation strategies that focus on the ISA-effectiveness would be helpful to convince people about the benefits of using such a system. Often when new driver support technologies are intro-duced – especially when it could restrict certain freedom in driving – a majority of the population is reluctant when it comes to ‘buy or use’ the system. In some studies (see Morsink et al., 2006; Marchau et al., 2010) the willingness to pay was reported to be a good predictor for acceptability. However, in the present study the effect of willing-ness to pay was very low or even absent; hence it may be as-sumed that better indicators are put in the model than the willing-ness to pay. With respect to context indicators, ‘personal and social aims’ seemed to be the variable with the highest influence on accep-tability. Drivers, who rate social aims above personal aims with respect to speed and speeding, will accept ISA more. Personal and social aims had also a high influence on most of the device spe-cific indicators. Furthermore, drivers who speed for their personal benefit were found to rather speed more often. Drivers who speed in high-speed zones would also be less inclined to accept ISA. This is in line with previous findings (e.g. Jamson et al., 2006), frequent speeders would support ISA less; those drivers who would benefit most of ISA would be less likely to use it. This is an important finding when considering the strategies for implementing ISA. Some studies (e.g. Morsink et al., 2006) indicated that to increase the acceptability, implementation strategies and campaigns could focus on other benefits of ISA (like reducing speeding tickets, emissions etc.). According to our study these secondary effects have rather small effects to increase acceptability. Drivers who like to speed would even care less for these secondary benefits of ISA. The youngest group of drivers (<25 years old) would influence responsibility awareness negatively. These younger drivers are also less convinced that certain behaviour or circumstances could cause accidents. Many studies indicated that young drivers over-estimate their own driving skills, drive faster and are less aware of accident causes (Shinar et al., 2001). For the implementation of ISA – although there is no direct relationship between younger age and acceptability – a different strategy is needed to convince this group of drivers. Awareness campaigns and communication should be deployed during their education, however, road safety education and training stops during secondary school or higher education (OECD, 2006). Drivers between 25 and 45 years old would also be less inclined to accept ISA, mainly considered out of indirect effects in the esti-mated model. This group of drivers may be labelled as one of the most active groups of drivers. Another aspect is that both of the "significant found age groups were influenced by social norms. This may be very important in implementation strate-gies. For instance, role models could be used in ISA driving. This strategy was also used in the Belgian trial to gain more publicity and attention. The positive image and the improved information communication of ISA as a possible measure in road-safety have led to several voted resolutions in the Belgian federal parliament and senate (Vlassenroot et al. 2007)

Implementation and Evaluation of a Cooperative Vehicle-to-Pedestrian Safety Application

While the development of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) safety applications based on Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) has been extensively undergoing standardization for more than a decade, such applications are extremely missing for Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs). Nonexistence of collaborative systems between VRUs and vehicles was the main reason for this lack of attention. Recent developments in Wi-Fi Direct and DSRC-enabled smartphones are changing this perspective. Leveraging the existing V2V platforms, we propose a new framework using a DSRC-enabled smartphone to extend safety benefits to VRUs. The interoperability of applications between vehicles and portable DSRC enabled devices is achieved through the SAE J2735 Personal Safety Message (PSM). However, considering the fact that VRU movement dynamics, response times, and crash scenarios are fundamentally different from vehicles, a specific framework should be designed for VRU safety applications to study their performance. In this article, we first propose an end-to-end Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) framework to provide situational awareness and hazard detection based on the most common and injury-prone crash scenarios. The details of our VRU safety module, including target classification and collision detection algorithms, are explained next. Furthermore, we propose and evaluate a mitigating solution for congestion and power consumption issues in such systems. Finally, the whole system is implemented and analyzed for realistic crash scenarios

INTELLIGENTE TRANSPORT SYSTEMEN ITS EN VERKEERSVEILIGHEID

This report discusses Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). This generic term is used for a broad range of information-, control- and electronic technology that can be integrated in the road infrastructure and the vehicles themselves, saving lives, time and money bymonitoring and managing traffic flows, reducing conges-tion, avoiding accidents, etc. Because this report was written in the scope of the Policy Research Centre Mobility & Public Works, track Traffic Safety, it focuses on ITS systems from the traffic safety point of view. Within the whole range of ITS systems, two categories can be distinguished: autonomous and cooperative systems. Autonomous systems are all forms of ITS which operate by itself, and do not depend on the cooperation with other vehicles or supporting infrastructure. Example applications are blind spot detection using radar, electronic stability control, dynamic traffic management using variable road signs, emergency call, etc. Cooperative systems are ITS systems based on communication and cooperation, both between vehicles as between vehicles and infrastructure. Example applications are alerting vehicles approaching a traffic jam, exchanging data regarding hazardous road conditions, extended electronic brake light, etc. In some cases, autonomous systems can evolve to autonomous cooperative systems. ISA (Intelligent Speed Adaptation) is an example of this: the dynamic aspect as well as communication with infrastructure (eg Traffic lights, Variable Message Sign (VMS)...) can provide additional road safety. This is the clear link between the two parts of this report. The many ITS applications are an indicator of the high expectations from the government, the academic world and the industry regarding the possibilities made possible by both categories of ITS systems. Therefore, the comprehensive discussion of both of them is the core of this report. The first part of the report covering the autonomous systems treats two aspects: 1. Overview of European projects related to mobility and in particular to road safety 2. Overview for guidelines for the evaluation of ITS projects. Out of the wide range of diverse (autonomous) ITS applications a selection is made; this selection is focused on E Safety Forum and PreVENT. Especially the PreVent research project is interesting because ITS-applications have led to a number of concrete demonstration vehicles that showed - in protected and unprotected surroundings- that these ITS-applications are already technically useful or could be developed into useful products. The component “guidelines for the evaluation of ITS projects” outlines that the government has to have specific evaluation tools if the government has the ambition of using ITS-applications for road safety. Two projects -guidelines for the evaluation of ITS projects- are examined; a third evaluation method is only mentioned because this description shows that a specific targeting of the government can be desirable : 1. TRACE describes the guidelines for the evaluation of ITS projects which are useful for the evaluation of specific ITS-applications. 2. FITS contains Finnish guidelines for the evaluation of ITS project; FIS is an adaptation of methods used for evaluation of transport projects. 3. The third evaluation method for the evaluation of ITS projects is developed in an ongoing European research project, eImpact. eImpact is important because, a specific consultation of stake holders shows that the social importance of some techniques is underestimated. These preliminary results show that an appropriate guiding role for the government could be important. In the second part of this document the cooperative systems are discussed in depth. These systems enable a large number of applications with an important social relevance, both on the level of the environment, mobility and traffic safety. Cooperative systems make it possible to warn drivers in time to avoid collisions (e.g. when approaching the tail of a traffic jam, or when a ghost driver is detected). Hazardous road conditions can be automatically communicated to other drivers (e.g. after the detection of black ice or an oil trail by the ESP). Navigation systems can receive detailed real-time up-dates about the current traffic situation and can take this into account when calculating their routes. When a traffic distortion occurs, traffic centers can immediately take action and can actively influence the way that the traffic will be diverted. Drivers can be notified well in advance about approaching emergency vehicles, and can be directed to yield way in a uniform manner. This is just a small selection from the large number of applications that are made possible because of cooperative ITS systems, but it is very obvious that these systems can make a significant positive contribution to traffic safety. In literature it is estimated that the decrease of accidents with injuries of fatalities will be between 20% and 50% . It is not suprising that ITS systems receive a lot of attention for the moment. On an international level, a number of standards are being established regarding this topic. The International Telecommunications Uniont (ITU), Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Association of Radio Industries and Business (ARIB) and European committee for standardization (CEN) are currently defining standards that describe different aspects of ITS systems. One of the names that is mostly mentioned in literature is the ISO TC204/WG16 Communications Architecture for Land Mobile environment (CALM) standard. It describes a framework that enables transparent (both for the application and the user) continuous communication through different communication media. Besides the innumerable standardization activities, there is a great number of active research projects. On European level, the most important are the i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative, the eSafety Forum, and the COMeSafety, the CVIS, the SAFESPOT, the COOPERS and the SEVECOM project. The i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative is an European initiative with the goal to halve the number of traffic casualties by 2010. The eSafety Forum is an initiative of the European Commission, industry and other stakeholders and targets the acceleration of development and deployment of safety-related ITS systems. The COMeSafety project supports the eSafety Forum on the field of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. In the CVIS project, attention is given to both technical and non-technical issues, with the main goal to develop the first free and open reference implementation of the CALM architecture. The SAFEST project investigates which data is important for safety applications, and with which algorithmsthis data can be extracted from vehicles and infrastructure. The COOPERS project mainly targets communication between vehicles and dedicated roadside infrastructure. Finally, the SEVECOM project researches security and privacy issues. Besides the European projects, research is also conducted in the United States of America (CICAS and VII projects) and in Japan (AHSRA, VICS, Smartway, internetITS). Besides standardization bodies and governmental organizations, also the industry has a considerable interest in ITS systems. In the scope of their ITS activities, a number of companies are united in national and international organizations. On an international level, the best known names are the Car 2 Car Communication Consortium, and Ertico. The C2C CC unites the large European car manufacturers, and focuses on the development of an open standard for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications based on the already well established IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard. Ertico is an European multi-sector, public/private partnership with the intended purpose of the development and introduction of ITS systems. On a national level, FlandersDrive and The Telematics Cluster / ITS Belgium are the best known organizations. Despite the worldwide activities regarding (cooperative) ITS systems, there still is no consensus about the wireless technology to be used in such systems. This can be put down to the fact that a large number of suitable technologies exist or are under development. Each technology has its specific advantages and disadvantages, but no single technology is the ideal solution for every ITS application. However, the different candidates can be classified in three distinct categories. The first group contains solutions for Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC), such as the WAVE technology. The second group is made up of several cellular communication networks providing coverage over wide areas. Examples are GPRS (data communication using the GSM network), UMTS (faster then GPRS), WiMAX (even faster then UMTS) and MBWA (similar to WiMAX). The third group consists of digital data broadcast technologies such as RDS (via the current FM radio transmissions, slow), DAB and DMB (via current digital radio transmissions, quicker) and DVB-H (via future digital television transmissions for mobiledevices, quickest). The previous makes it clear that ITS systems are a hot topic right now, and they receive a lot of attention from the academic world, the standardization bodies and the industry. Therefore, it seems like that it is just a matter of time before ITS systems will find their way into the daily live. Due to the large number of suitable technologies for the implementation of cooperative ITS systems, it is very hard to define which role the government has to play in these developments, and which are the next steps to take. These issues were addressed in reports produced by the i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative and the CVIS project. Their state of the art overview revealed that until now, no country has successfully deployed a fully operational ITS system yet. Seven EU countries are the furthest and are already in the deployment phase: Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland, Spain and France. These countries are trailed by eight countries which are in the promotion phase: Denmark, Greece, Italy, Austria, Belgium,Norway, the Czech Republic and Poland. Finally, the last ten countries find themselves in the start-up phase: Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Portugal, Switzerland, Ireland and Luxembourg. These European reports produced by the i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative and the CVIS project have defined a few policy recommendations which are very relevant for the Belgian and Flemish government. The most important recommendations for the Flemish government are: • Support awareness: research revealed that civilians consider ITS applications useful, but they are not really willing to pay for this technology. Therefore, it is important to convince the general public of the usefulness and the importance of ITS systems. • Fill the gaps: Belgium is situated in the promotion phase. This means that it should focus at identifying the missing stakeholders, and coordinating national and regional ITS activities. Here it is important that the research activities are coordinated in a national and international context to allow transfer of knowledge from one study to the next, as well as the results to be comparable. • Develop a vision: in the scope of ITS systems policies have to be defined regarding a large number of issues. For instance there is the question if ITS users should be educated, meaning that the use of ITS systems should be the subject of the drivers license exam. How will the regulations be for the technical inspection of vehicles equipped with ITS technology? Will ITS systems be deployed on a voluntary base, or will they e.g. be obliged in every new car? Will the services be offered by private companies, by the public authorities, or by a combination of them? Which technology will be used to implement ITS systems? These are just a few of the many questions where the government will have to develop a point of view for. • Policy coordination: ITS systems are a policy subject on an international, national and regional level. It is very important that these policy organizations can collaborate in a coordinated manner. • Iterative approach to policy development: developing policies for this complex matter is not a simple task. This asks for an iterative approach, where policy decisions are continuously refined and adjusted

In loco intellegentia: Human factors for the future European train driver

The European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) represents a step change in technology for rail operations in Europe. It comprises track-to-train communications and intelligent on-board systems providing an unprecedented degree of support to the train driver. ERTMS is designed to improve safety, capacity and performance, as well as facilitating interoperability across the European rail network. In many ways, particularly from the human factors perspective, ERTMS has parallels with automation concepts in the aviation and automotive industries. Lessons learned from both these industries are that such a technology raises a number of human factors issues associated with train driving and operations. The interaction amongst intelligent agents throughout the system must be effectively coordinated to ensure that the strategic benefits of ERTMS are realised. This paper discusses the psychology behind some of these key issues, such as Mental Workload (MWL), interface design, user information requirements, transitions and migration and communications. Relevant experience in aviation and vehicle automation is drawn upon to give an overview of the human factors challenges facing the UK rail industry in implementing ERTMS technology. By anticipating and defining these challenges before the technology is implemented, it is hoped that a proactive and structured programme of research can be planned to meet them