Toward a Comfortable Driving Experience for a Self-Driving Shuttle Bus

The convergence of mechanical, electrical, and advanced ICT technologies, driven by artificial intelligence and 5G vehicle-to-everything (5G-V2X) connectivity, will help to develop high-performance autonomous driving vehicles and services that are usable and convenient for self-driving passengers. Despite widespread research on self-driving, user acceptance remains an essential part of successful market penetration this forms the motivation behind studies on human factors associated with autonomous shuttle services. We address this by providing a comfortable driving experience while not compromising safety. We focus on the accelerations and jerks of vehicles to reduce the risk of motion sickness and to improve the driving experience for passengers. Furthermore, this study proposes a time-optimal velocity planning method for guaranteeing comfort criteria when an explicit reference path is given. The overall controller and planning method were verified using real-time, software-in-the-loop (SIL) environments for a real-time vehicle dynamics simulation the performance was then compared with a typical planning approach. The proposed optimized planning shows a relatively better performance and enables a comfortable passenger experience in a self-driving shuttle bus according to the recommended criteria. Document type: Articl

The trans-ancestral genomic architecture of glycemic traits

Glycemic traits are used to diagnose and monitor type 2 diabetes and cardiometabolic health. To date, most genetic studies of glycemic traits have focused on individuals of European ancestry. Here we aggregated genome-wide association studies comprising up to 281,416 individuals without diabetes (30% non-European ancestry) for whom fasting glucose, 2-h glucose after an oral glucose challenge, glycated hemoglobin and fasting insulin data were available. Trans-ancestry and single-ancestry meta-analyses identified 242 loci (99 novel; P < 5 x 10(-8)), 80% of which had no significant evidence of between-ancestry heterogeneity. Analyses restricted to individuals of European ancestry with equivalent sample size would have led to 24 fewer new loci. Compared with single-ancestry analyses, equivalent-sized trans-ancestry fine-mapping reduced the number of estimated variants in 99% credible sets by a median of 37.5%. Genomic-feature, gene-expression and gene-set analyses revealed distinct biological signatures for each trait, highlighting different underlying biological pathways. Our results increase our understanding of diabetes pathophysiology by using trans-ancestry studies for improved power and resolution. A trans-ancestry meta-analysis of GWAS of glycemic traits in up to 281,416 individuals identifies 99 novel loci, of which one quarter was found due to the multi-ancestry approach, which also improves fine-mapping of credible variant sets.Peer reviewe

Does Political Participation Strengthen the Relationship between Civic Morality and Environmentally Friendly Attitudes? Evidence from South Korea

Environmental degradation in recent years has been threatening not only environmental sustainability but also human viability. To counter these threats, this study focuses on whether civic morality is associated with taxation for environmental protection (green taxation) and with higher pricing for environmental protection (green pricing) and whether the relationship between civic morality and green taxation, as well as that between civic morality and green pricing, is moderated by individuals&rsquo; perceptions of their own political participation. Employing the 2014 Korean General Social Survey and an ordered probit model, the study finds that civic morality is positively associated with green pricing and green taxation. Moreover, the positive relationship between civic morality and green pricing, as well as between civic morality and green taxation, is further strengthened when individuals&rsquo; perceptions of their own political participation are strong

An Inverse Vehicle Model for a Neural-Network-Based Integrated Lateral and Longitudinal Automatic Parking Controller

The majority of currently used automatic parking systems exploit the planning-and-tracking approach that involves planning the reference trajectory first and then tracking the desired reference trajectory. However, the response delay of longitudinal velocity prevents the parking controller from tracing the desired trajectory because the vehicle&rsquo;s velocity and other state parameters are not synchronized, while the controller maneuvers the vehicle according to the planned desired velocity and steering profiles. We propose an inverse vehicle model to provide a neural-network-based integrated lateral and longitudinal automatic parking controller. We approximated the relationship of the planned velocity to the vehicle&rsquo;s velocity using a second-order difference equation that involves the response characteristic of the vehicle&rsquo;s longitudinal delay. The adjusted desired velocity to track the origin-planned velocity is calculated using the inverse vehicle model. Furthermore, we proposed an integrated longitudinal and lateral parking controller using an artificial neural network (ANN) model trained on a dataset applying the inverse vehicle model. By learning the control laws between the vehicle&rsquo;s states and the corresponding actions, the proposed ANN-based controller could yield a steering angle and the adjusted desired velocity to complete automatic parking in a confined space

BIM-Based Maintenance Data Processing Mechanism through COBie Standard Development for Port Facility

In the AECO field, there have been many efforts to transform the design, construction, and maintenance methods that have been carried out in the traditional way based on document-based data into digital ones. BIM makes it possible for the information necessary for the entire construction process to be transformed into a language that computers can understand. In the field of architecture, BIM has been actively used throughout the entire construction life cycle through steady research since the 2000s, while COBie was developed in order to deliver information generated in the design and construction phase to the maintenance phase based on the BIM environment. In the field of infrastructure, however, digital data-based maintenance information management has not been actively studied. In particular, in the case of a port, once a facility is built, it has to be maintained for a longer period than other facilities, so facility maintenance is of utmost importance. Therefore, this study applied COBie, which is being used in the architecture field (building), to the port field. To this end, the COBie standard format in the port field was developed based on the port facility object breakdown structure and property breakdown structure. The port COBie developed through this study is included when the BIM model is converted to the IFC model so that facility management can be performed through the IFC-based viewer in the future. The port COBie schema developed in this study can be expanded to other fields such as roads and bridges in the future

BIM-Based Maintenance Data Processing Mechanism through COBie Standard Development for Port Facility

In the AECO field, there have been many efforts to transform the design, construction, and maintenance methods that have been carried out in the traditional way based on document-based data into digital ones. BIM makes it possible for the information necessary for the entire construction process to be transformed into a language that computers can understand. In the field of architecture, BIM has been actively used throughout the entire construction life cycle through steady research since the 2000s, while COBie was developed in order to deliver information generated in the design and construction phase to the maintenance phase based on the BIM environment. In the field of infrastructure, however, digital data-based maintenance information management has not been actively studied. In particular, in the case of a port, once a facility is built, it has to be maintained for a longer period than other facilities, so facility maintenance is of utmost importance. Therefore, this study applied COBie, which is being used in the architecture field (building), to the port field. To this end, the COBie standard format in the port field was developed based on the port facility object breakdown structure and property breakdown structure. The port COBie developed through this study is included when the BIM model is converted to the IFC model so that facility management can be performed through the IFC-based viewer in the future. The port COBie schema developed in this study can be expanded to other fields such as roads and bridges in the future

Partly clustering solutions of nonlinear Schrodinger systems with mixed interactions

In this paper, we prove a partly clustering phenomenon for nonlinear Schrodinger systems with large mixed couplings of attractive and repulsive forces, which arise from the models in Bose-Einstein condensates and nonlinear optics. More precisely, we consider a system with three components where the interaction between the first two components and the third component is repulsive, and the interaction between the first two components is attractive. Recent studies [10-13] in this case show that for large interaction forces, the first two components are localized in a region with a small energy and the third component is close to a solution of a single equation. Especially, the results in the works [12,13] say that the region of localization for a (locally) least energy vector solution on a ball in the class of radially symmetric functions is the origin or the whole boundary depending on the space dimension 1 &lt;= n &lt;= 3. In this paper we construct a new type of solutions with a region of localization different from the origin or the whole boundary. In fact, we show that there exist radially symmetric positive vector solutions with clustering multi-bumps for the first two components near the maximum point of r(n-1)U(3), where U is the limit of the third component and the maximum point is the only critical point different from the origin and the boundary

Nonlinear Schrodinger systems with trapping potentials for mixed attractive and repulsive interactions

In this paper, we prove the existence of a positive least energy vector solution and its asymptotic behavior for three-component nonlinear Schrodinger systems with mixed couplings (two repulsive and one attractive) forces and nonconstant potentials on the entire space when the interaction forces are large. When the system with mixed coupling forces has constant potentials, repulsive forces make a state more stable when the interaction between components are less; thus it loses a compactness due to translation segregating components. To get a compactness, we impose a potential wall at infinity; then, we can construct a least energy vector solution. A main interest in this work is its asymptotic behavior of the solution for large interaction forces; one component repelling other two components survives and the other two components diminish and concentrate at a point diverging to infinity as the interaction forces are getting larger and larger. The location of the concetration point, which we could characterize in terms of the limit of a surviving component, a repulsive force and potentials of diminishing components under the assumption of the nondegeneracy for the limit problem of the surviving component