Driverless road-marking Machines: Ma(r)king the Way towards the Future of Mobility

Driverless road maintenance could potentially be highly beneficial to all its stakeholders, with the key goals being increased safety for all road participants, more efficient traffic management, and reduced road maintenance costs such that the standard of the road infrastructure is sufficient for it to be used in Automated Driving (AD). This paper addresses how the current state of technology could be expanded to reach those goals. Within the project 'System for Teleoperated Road-marking' (SToRM), using the road-marking machine as the system, different operation modes based on teleoperation were discussed and developed. Furthermore, a functional system overview considering both hardware and software elements was experimentally validated with an actual road-marking machine and should serve as a baseline for future efforts in this and similar areas.Comment: Accepted at 2022 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC

Systematic Analysis of the Sensor Coverage of Automated Vehicles Using Phenomenological Sensor Models

The objective of this paper is to propose a systematic analysis of the sensor coverage of automated vehicles. Due to an unlimited number of possible traffic situations, a selection of scenarios to be tested must be applied in the safety assessment of automated vehicles. This paper describes how phenomenological sensor models can be used to identify system-specific relevant scenarios. In automated driving, the following sensors are predominantly used: camera, ultrasonic, \radar and \lidarohne. Based on the literature, phenomenological models have been developed for the four sensor types, which take into account phenomena such as environmental influences, sensor properties and the type of object to be detected. These phenomenological models have a significantly higher reliability than simple ideal sensor models and require lower computing costs than realistic physical sensor models, which represents an optimal compromise for systematic investigations of sensor coverage. The simulations showed significant differences between different system configurations and thus support the system-specific selection of relevant scenarios for the safety assessment of automated vehicles.Comment: Published at 2019 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV19), June 201

Automatic Generation of Road Geometries to Create Challenging Scenarios for Automated Vehicles Based on the Sensor Setup

For the offline safety assessment of automated vehicles, the most challenging and critical scenarios must be identified efficiently. Therefore, we present a new approach to define challenging scenarios based on a sensor setup model of the ego-vehicle. First, a static optimal approaching path of a road user to the ego-vehicle is calculated using an A* algorithm. We consider a poor perception of the road user by the automated vehicle as optimal, because we want to define scenarios that are as critical as possible. The path is then transferred to a dynamic scenario, where the trajectory of the road user and the road layout are determined. The result is an optimal road geometry, so that the ego-vehicle can perceive an approaching object as poorly as possible. The focus of our work is on the highway as the Operational Design Domain (ODD).Comment: Accepted at the 2020 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV), October 20-23, 202

Identification of Challenging Highway-Scenarios for the Safety Validation of Automated Vehicles Based on Real Driving Data

For a successful market launch of automated vehicles (AVs), proof of their safety is essential. Due to the open parameter space, an infinite number of traffic situations can occur, which makes the proof of safety an unsolved problem. With the so-called scenario-based approach, all relevant test scenarios must be identified. This paper introduces an approach that finds particularly challenging scenarios from real driving data (\RDDwo) and assesses their difficulty using a novel metric. Starting from the highD data, scenarios are extracted using a hierarchical clustering approach and then assigned to one of nine pre-defined functional scenarios using rule-based classification. The special feature of the subsequent evaluation of the concrete scenarios is that it is independent of the performance of the test vehicle and therefore valid for all AVs. Previous evaluation metrics are often based on the criticality of the scenario, which is, however, dependent on the behavior of the test vehicle and is therefore only conditionally suitable for finding "good" test cases in advance. The results show that with this new approach a reduced number of particularly challenging test scenarios can be derived.Comment: Accepted at 2020 Fifteenth International Conference on Ecological Vehicles and Renewable Energies (EVER

Identification of lumped stiffness parameters for a motorcycle model in investigating weave and wobble

In motorcycle dynamics, great importance is attributed to the study of the weave and wobble vibration modes and, in particular, to the effects of the flexibility of structural components on their stability. Therefore, appropriate motorcycle models for studying weave and wobble should include flexible elements for describing the flexural behavior of components such as the main frame, front assembly, and rear swingarm. Different approaches are possible formodeling flexibilities: the most common among them are the lumped stiffness and the flexible multibody approaches. While the latter certainly provides higher accuracy, the former has advantages in terms of computational load, but, above all, it makes it easier to understand in the design phase how technical parameters, such as torsional and bending stiffness of a given structural component, can influence the stability of weave and wobble. The accuracy of lumped stiffness models strongly depends on parameter identification. In this study, a general method is proposed to determine appropriate lumped stiffness parameters for any given motorcycle component. The proposed method is tested and validated by comparing the weave and wobble modal behavior with the results of flexible multibody analysis. The lumped stiffness model is then adopted to carry out a sensitivity analysis aimed at identifying the effects on the weave and wobble stability of the torsional and bending stiffness of specific structural components of the motorcycle to optimize their design

UNICARagil - Disruptive Modular Architectures for Agile, Automated Vehicle Concepts

This paper introduces UNICARagil, a collaborative project carried out by a consortium of seven German universities and six industrial partners, with funding provided by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany. In the scope of this project, disruptive modular structures for agile, automated vehicle concepts are researched and developed. Four prototype vehicles of different characteristics based on the same modular platform are going to be build up over a period of four years. The four fully automated and driverless vehicles demonstrate disruptive architectures in hardware and software, as well as disruptive concepts in safety, security, verification and validation. This paper outlines the most important research questions underlying the project

Automation of the UNICARagil Vehicles

The German research project UNICARagil is a collaboration between eight universities and six industrial partners funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It aims to develop innovative modular architectures and methods for new agile, automated vehicle concepts. This paper summarizes the automation approach of the driverless vehicle concept and its modular realization within the four demonstration vehicles to be built by the consortium. On-board each vehicle, this comprises sensor modules for environment perception and modelling, motion planning for normal driving and safe halts, as well as the respective control algorithms and base functionalities like precise localization. A control room and cloud functionalities provide off-board support to the vehicles, which are additionally addressed in this paper