Diseño e implementación de una ayuda electrónica para pacientes con baja visión periférica (I)

El principal objetivo del proyecto es crear un sistema de procesamiento de imágenes de un tamaño reducido, capaz de enviar la información de los contornos y las profundidades del entorno a personas con baja visión periférica a través de unas gafas de realidad virtual, creando para ello un sistema que satisfaga dichas necesidades con el menor coste posible. Se van a separar el cálculo de distancias y el cálculo de bordes como dos bloques independientes, desarrollando así dos Trabajos Fin de Grado diferentes. En esta memoria en concreto se tratará el cálculo de los contornos incluyendo: El diseño de los algoritmos y su implementación en un sistema de bajo coste. Por tanto, tras un diagnóstico realizado con un programa que se desarrolla en la siguiente memoria, se localizará la zona óptima o remanente de visión del paciente. Para ello no se seguirán métodos médicos de diagnóstico, sino que será el propio paciente el que elegirá esa zona. En esa zona se enviará a través de las micropantallas de las gafas la imagen de los contornos, en el color que el paciente seleccione, del entorno que rodea al paciente en tiempo real. Esa imagen será capturada por una cámara situada en las gafas. El sistema de procesamiento que se encargará de transformar las imágenes capturadas por la cámara y calcular los bordes de todos los objetos representados en dichas imágenes para después trasladarlas a las gafas, será de un tamaño reducido capaz de entrar en un bolsillo. En este proyecto se valorarán varias alternativas, buscando así la que mejores características tenga. De esta manera se tendrá un sistema de bajo presupuesto, el cual podrá dar información del entorno a personas que debido a diversas afecciones han perdido parte de su visión periférica y por tanto han visto reducido parte de su visión, su resto visual.The main objective of the project consists of creating an small-sized image processing system. This system is intended to be able to send information about the edges and depths of the environment to people with low peripheral vision through virtual reality glasses, by creating a system that meets these needs at the lowest possible cost. The calculation of the distance and the calculation of the edges have been divided into two different sections. As a result, two different End-of-Degree Projects have been developed. This report specifically addresses the calculation of the edges, including the design of the algorithms and their implementation on a low-cost system. Therefore, the patient’s optimal zone of vision or residual vision will be located after performing a diagnosis with a software which is developed in the following report. For this purpose, medical diagnostic methods should not be followed: the patient himself will choose this zone. In this specific zone, the image of the edges which describe the patient’s surroundings will be sent in real time. This image, whose color will be the patient’s choice, will be sent through the microscreens of the glasses and will be captured by a camera located in the glasses. The processing system will transform the images captured by the camera and calculate the edges of all the objects represented in these images. In addition, the system, which will be poket-sized, will transfer these images to the camera. Several alternatives will be assessed along this project in order to find the one with the best features. This way, a low-budget system able to provide people with information about the environment and surroundings will be developed. The system focuses on people who suffer from different visual impairments and have lost part of their peripheral vision. For this reason, they have experienced a reduction on their residual vision.Ingeniería Electrónica Industrial y Automátic

Diseño de un sistema ADAS para la prevención de vuelco en vehículos comerciales

Debido al elevado número de víctimas en accidentes de tráfico, la Comisión Europea ha establecido como una prioridad la reducción de los fallecimientos a través del objetivo "Visión Cero” el cual pretende reducir a cero el número de muertes en carretera para el año 2050. Por esta razón, hoy en día se están incorporando en los vehículos sistemas de ayuda a la conducción, también conocidos como sistemas ADAS (Advance Driver Assitance System), que mejoran su estabilidad, confort y maniobrabilidad. Dentro del parque automovilístico actual, uno de los vehículos involucrados en los accidentes de tráfico son los vehículos comerciales, los cuales, debido a la altura de su centro de gravedad, son más propensos a volcar. Debido a esto, varios trabajos de investigación en el ámbito de la automoción se centran en el desarrollo de sistemas de control para mejorar la estabilidad en vehículos comerciales. Para el correcto funcionamiento de estos sistemas, es necesario conocer en todo momento la dinámica del vehículo a través de variables tales como aceleraciones, velocidades y ángulos. Para que estos dispositivos funcionen de la manera más correcta y segura posible, se deben cumplir dos requisitos fundamentales, precisión en las medidas realizadas y rapidez en la adquisición y procesamiento de los datos, así como en el envío de las ordenes posteriores. Una de las variables de la dinámica lateral de los vehículos comerciales más importantes para poder controlar su estabilidad, es el ángulo de balanceo. Este ángulo se puede medir de manera precisa a través de sistemas GPS de doble antena, pero se trata de un método muy caro por lo que actualmente no se monta en los vehículos en producción en serie ya que incrementaría el precio de estos notablemente. Por otro lado, la obtención de este valor a través de sensores de bajo coste es complicada, por esa razón, muchas investigaciones se centran en el desarrollo de observadores que sean capaces de estimar este ángulo a través de sensores de bajo coste. Para el correcto funcionamiento de los sistemas de control montados en los vehículos, es necesario que los distintos componentes, sensores, controladores y actuadores, se comuniquen entre sí. Para que la comunicación sea lo más eficiente posible se han desarrollado los sistemas de control en red (NCS, Network Control Systems) que permiten que todos los componentes estén conectados a una misma red de manera individual. El problema que existe es que pueden aparecer retardos inducidos por la red, lo que provoca una reducción del rendimiento de estos sistemas y puede comprometer la seguridad del vehículo. Por esta razón, es necesario que los controladores que se incorporen en los vehículos actuales tengan en consideración el posible retardo en el envío de información entre los distintos componentes. Por todo lo indicado anteriormente, en la presente Tesis Doctoral se va a diseñar un controlador de vuelco robusto que sea capaz de compensar retardos en la red de comunicación, es decir, tanto en la señal de entrada al controlador (enviada por el sensor) como la de salida (enviada al actuador). Para evaluar el rendimiento del mismo, se comparará este con un controlador similar pero que no tenga en cuenta el retardo en su diseño. Previo al desaroollo del controlador, se estudiará la precisión de los sensores de bajo coste utilizados en comparación con sus homólogos de altas prestaciones y precio para ver si es viable la utilización de este tipo de sensores para el diseño del controlador propuesto. Asimismo, se va a analizar la velocidad y precisión de procesamiento de las computadoras de bajo coste, para ello se van a utilizar distintos metodos para la estimación del ángulo de balanceo. Para la evaluación de estos sistemas se van a realizar ensayos experimentales en un vehículo y un entorno real sometido a distintas maniobras típicas de una circulación cotidiana. Por último, para afrontar el problema del retardo indicado en párrafos anteriores,Due to the high number of victims in traffic accidents, the European Commission has established as a priority the reduction of deaths through the vision zero objective, which aims to reduce the number of road deaths to zero by 2050. For this purpose, to improve their stability, comfort and manoeuvrability several systems are being incorporated into vehicles. Within the current automobile fleet, one of the vehicles most involved in traffic accidents are heavy duty vehicles which, due to the height of their centre of gravity, are more likely to roll over. Due to this, much of the research work in the automotive field focuses on the development of control systems to improve stability in commercial vehicles. For the correct functionating of these systems, it is necessary to always know the dynamics of the vehicle through variables such as accelerations, speeds and angles. For these devices to work in the most correct and safe way possible, it is necessary that they fulfil two main characteristics. precision in the measurements made and speed in the acquisition and processing of data. One of the most important variables of the lateral dynamics of a vehicle to control its stability is the roll angle. This angle can be precisely measured through dual antenna GPS systems, but it is a very expensive method, and it would significantly increase the price of vehicles. On the other hand, the measurement of this value through low-cost sensors is complicated and not very accurate, for this reason many investigations are focused on the development of observers that can estimate this angle through low-cost sensors. For the correct operation of current vehicle control systems, it is necessary for the different components, sensors, controllers, and actuators to communicate with each other. To make communication as fast as possible, Network Control Systems (NCS) have been developed that allow all components to be connected to the same network individually. The problem that exists is that network-induced delays can appear, which causes a reduction in the performance of these systems and can compromise the safety of the vehicle. For this reason, it is necessary that the controllers that are incorporated in current vehicles consider the possible delay in the communication between the different components. In this Doctoral Thesis a vehicle with low-cost sensors and processors will be instrumented. The precision of the sensors will be evaluated with a high performance and price device, and the speed and processing precision of low-cost computers will be analysed, using them to estimate the roll angle using different methods. For the evaluation of these systems, experimental tests will be carried out on a vehicle and a real environment subjected to different typical manoeuvres of a daily traffic. Finally, to face the delay problem indicated in previous paragraphs, a roll stability controller will be designed that is capable of compensating delays in the communication network, that is, both in the input signal to the controller (sent by the sensor) and output (sent to actuator).Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería Mecánica y de Organización Industrial por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: José Luis San Román García.- Secretaria: Blanca del Valle Arenas Ramírez.- Vocal: Antonio Javier Nieto Quijorn

LMI-based H∞ controller of vehicle roll stability control systems with input and output delays

This article belongs to the Section Physical Sensors.Many of the current research works are focused on the development of different control systems for commercial vehicles in order to reduce the incidence of risky driving situations, while also improving stability and comfort. Some works are focused on developing low-cost embedded systems with enough accuracy, reliability, and processing time. Previous research works have analyzed the integration of low-cost sensors in vehicles. These works demonstrated the feasibility of using these systems, although they indicate that this type of low-cost kit could present relevant delays and noise that must be compensated to improve the performance of the device. For this purpose, it is necessary design controllers for systems with input and output delays. The novelty of this work is the development of an LMI-Based H∞ output-feedback controller that takes into account the effect of delays in the network, both on the sensor side and the actuator side, on RSC (Roll Stability Control) systems. The controller is based on an active suspension with input and output delays, where the anti-roll moment is used as a control input and the roll rate as measured data, both with delays. This controller was compared with a controller system with a no-delay consideration that was experiencing similar delays. The comparison was made through simulation tests with a validated vehicle on the TruckSim® software.This work was supported by the FEDER/Ministry of Science and Innovation-Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI) of the Government of Spain through the project [RTI2018-095143-B-C21]

Design of Low-Cost Vehicle Roll Angle Estimator Based on Kalman Filters and an IoT Architecture

In recent years, there have been many advances in vehicle technologies based on the efficient use of real-time data provided by embedded sensors. Some of these technologies can help you avoid or reduce the severity of a crash such as the Roll Stability Control (RSC) systems for commercial vehicles. In RSC, several critical variables to consider such as sideslip or roll angle canonly be directly measured using expensive equipment. These kind of devices would increase the priceof commercial vehicles. Nevertheless, sideslip or roll angle or values can be estimated using MEMSsensors in combination with data fusion algorithms. The objectives stated for this research workconsist of integrating roll angle estimators based on Linear and Unscented Kalman filters to evaluatethe precision of the results obtained and determining the fulfillment of the hard real-time processing constraints to embed this kind of estimators in IoT architectures based on low-cost equipment able to be deployed in commercial vehicles. An experimental testbed composed of a van with two setsof low-cost kits was set up, the first one including a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, and the other having an Intel Edison System on Chip. This experimental environment was tested under different conditions for comparison. The results obtained from low-cost experimental kits, based on IoT architecturesand including estimators based on Kalman filters, provide accurate roll angle estimation. Also, these results show that the processing time to get the data and execute the estimations based on Kalman Filters fulfill hard real time constraints.This work has been supported by Project funded by the Spanish Government, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Intelligent system of prevention of vuelco in commercial vehicles based on FPGAS [TRA2013-48030-C2-1-R]

VEHIOT: Design and Evaluation of an IoT Architecture Based on Low-Cost Devices to Be Embedded in Production Vehicles

Nowadays, the current vehicles are incorporating control systems in order to improve their stability and handling. These control systems need to know the vehicle dynamics through the variables (lateral acceleration, roll rate, roll angle, sideslip angle, etc.) that are obtained or estimated from sensors. For this goal, it is necessary to mount on vehicles not only low-cost sensors, but also low-cost embedded systems, which allow acquiring data from sensors and executing the developed algorithms to estimate and to control with novel higher speed computing. All these devices have to be integrated in an adequate architecture with enough performance in terms of accuracy, reliability and processing time. In this article, an architecture to carry out the estimation and control of vehicle dynamics has been developed. This architecture was designed considering the basic principles of IoT and integrates low-cost sensors and embedded hardware for orchestrating the experiments. A comparison of two different low-cost systems in terms of accuracy, acquisition time and reliability has been done. Both devices have been compared with the VBOX device from Racelogic, which has been used as the ground truth. The comparison has been made from tests carried out in a real vehicle. The lateral acceleration and roll rate have been analyzed in order to quantify the error of these devices.This work might not have been possible had it not been for the funds provided by the Spanish Government through the projects TRA2013-48030-C2-1-R and TRA2008-05373/AUT

Clutch Pedal Sensorization and Evaluation of the Main Parameters Related to Driver Posture

An improper decision for the design, selection and adjustment of the components needed to control a vehicle could generate negative effects and discomfort to the driver, where pedals play a very important role. The aim of the study is to provide a first approach to develop an embedded monitoring device in order to evaluate the posture of the driver, the influence of the clutch pedal and to advise about the possible risk. With that purpose in mind, a testbed was designed and two different sets of tests were carried out. The first test collected information about the volunteers who were part of the experiment, like the applied force on the clutch pedal or the body measurements. The second test was carried out to provide new insight into this matter. One of the more significant findings to emerge from this study is that the force applied on the clutch pedal provides enough information to determine correct driver posture. For this reason, a system composed of a pedal force sensor and an acquisition/processing system can fulfil the requirements to create a healthcare system focused on driver posture

Real-Time Vehicle Roll Angle Estimation Based on Neural Networks in IoT Low-Cost Devices

The high rate of vehicle-crash victims has a fatal economic and social impact in today's societies. In particular, road crashes where heavy vehicles are involved cause more severe damage because they are prone to rollover. For this reason, many researches are focused on developing RSC Roll Stability Control (RSC) systems. Concerning the design of RSC systems with an adequate performance, it is mandatory to know the dynamics of the vehicle. The main problem arises from the lack of ability to directly capture several required dynamic vehicle variables, such as roll angle, from low-cost sensors. Previous studies demonstrate that low-cost sensors can provide data in real-time with the required precision and reliability. Even more, other research works indicate that neural networks are efficient mechanisms to estimate roll angle. Nevertheless, it is necessary to assess that the fusion of data coming from low-cost devices and estimations provided by neural networks can fulfill hard real-time processing constraints, achieving high level of accuracy during circulation of a vehicle in real situations. In order to address this issue, this study has two main goals: (1) Design and develop an IoT based architecture, integrating ANN in low cost kits with different hardware architectures in order to estimate under real-time constraints the vehicle roll angle. This architecture is able to work under high dynamic conditions, by following specific best practices and considerations during its design; (2) assess that the IoT architecture deployed in low-cost experimental kits achieve the hard real-time performance constraints estimating the roll angle with the required calculation accuracy. To fulfil these objectives, an experimental environment was set up, composed of a van with two set of low-cost kits, one including a Raspberry Pi 3 Model Band the other having an Intel Edison System on Chip linked to a SparkFun 9 Degrees of Freedom module.This research was funded by Spanish Government through the projects TRA2013-48030-C2-1-R and TRA2008-05373/AUT

VEHIOT: evaluation of smartphones as data acquisition systems to reduce risk situations in commercial vehicles

Proceeding of: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Vehicular Electronics and Safety (ICVES): Madrid, 12-18 Septermber 2018.Vehicle dynamics studies are an indispensable characteristic to improve the vehicle stability and handling. To fulfil this requirement, control systems are included in commercial vehicles nowadays. These control systems consider variables such as lateral acceleration, roll rate and sideslip angle, that can be directly obtained from sensors or estimated from the collected data. With the objective of incorporating control systems without increasing the price of these vehicles, it is necessary to develop low-cost embedded systems, capable of acquiring data from a diversity of sensors to execute estimations and to perform control actions under real-time constraints. The increase of capabilities and features provided by smartphones enable them as data acquisition and processing devices. In this paper, an analysis in terms of reliability, accuracy and acquisition have been performed for two different smartphones in order to study the possibility to use this kind of devices as a low-cost sensing platform for vehicle dynamic applications. Each smartphone used in this study is classified into a different category (low-end or high-end device) depending on not only its price but also its specifications. Both yaw rate and lateral acceleration have been analyzed in order to quantify the performance of each smartphone. These variables have a direct influence on the vehicle lateral dynamics. Experimental tests have been carried out in a real scenario and the VBOX IMU connected with the VBOX 3i data logger of Racelogic has been used as the ground truth.The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding by Ministerio de Economa y Competitividad, Spain, under the grant TRA2013-48030-C2-1-R