Beside and behind the wheel : factors that influence driving stress and driving behavior

A large percentage of traffic accidents are due to human errors. Driving behavior and driving stress influence the probability of making these mistakes. Both are influenced by multiple factors, among which might be elements such as age, gender, sleeping hours, or working hours. The objective of this paper is to study, in a real scenario and without forcing the driver?s state, the relationship between driving behavior, driving stress, and these elements. Furthermore, we aim to provide guidelines to improve driving assistants. In this study, we used 1050 driving samples obtained from 35 volunteers. The driving samples correspond to regular commutes from home to the workplace. ANOVA and ANCOVA tests were carried out to check if there are significant differences in the four factors analyzed. Although the results show that driving behavior and driving stress are affected by gender, age, and sleeping hours, the most critical variable is working hours. Drivers with long working days suffer significantly more driving stress compared to other drivers, with the corresponding effect on their driving style. These drivers were the worst at maintaining the safety distance.5311-8814-F0ED | Sara Maria da Cruz Maia de Oliveira PaivaN/

COVID-19 and its effects on the driving style of spanish drivers

Spain is one of the countries most affected by COVID-19. Until May 5, 2021 there have been 3.54 million people infected and 78,399 deaths according to the Johns Hopkins Institute. This has meant that Spain is one of the countries in the world where the most restrictive measures have been adopted and which have had a strong impact on the economic, social, and mental health of citizens. One of the consequences of this pandemic is a severe increase in the strain on the healthcare system. Many of those infected had to be admitted to hospitals and even to Intensive Care Units (ICU). In this scenario, it is essential to reduce traffic accidents in order to avoid overcrowded hospitals. However, the Spanish General Directorate of Traffic highlights in several traffic reports that despite the decrease in the volume and distance of trips, the number of traffic accidents has not altered significantly and even during some periods has been higher than before the pandemic. The aim of this work is to establish if there has been a change in the driving style of drivers during the pandemic and to identify the group of people adopting a more inefficient and unsafe driving style. To this end, a study was carried out with 30 volunteers and their current driving style was compared with their driving style before the pandemic. The results show that drivers have adopted a more aggressive driving style than before the pandemic, especially women and those who have suffered anxiety due to COVID-19.5311-8814-F0ED | Sara Maria da Cruz Maia de Oliveira PaivaN/

Adaptive Streaming: A subjective catalog to assess the performance of objective QoE metrics

Scalable streaming has emerged as a feasible solution to resolve users' heterogeneity problems. SVC is the technology that has served as the definitive impulse for the growth of streaming adaptive systems. Systems seek to improve layer switching efficiency from the network point of view but, with increasing importance, without jeopardizing user perceived video quality, i.e., QoE. We have performed extensive subjective experiments to corroborate the preference towards adaptive systems when compared to traditional non-adaptive systems. The resulting subjective scores are correlated with most relevant Full Reference (FR) objective metrics. We obtain an exponential relationship between human decisions and the same decisions expressed as a difference of objective metrics. A strong correlation with subjective scores validates objective metrics to be used as aid in the adaptive decision taking algorithms to improve overall systems performance. Results show that, among the evaluated objective metrics, PSNR is the metric that provide worse results in terms of reproducing the human decision

User preferences in the design of advanced driver assistance systems

The transport network and mobility aspects are constantly changing, and major changes are expected in the coming years in terms of safety and sustainability purposes. In this paper, we present the main conclusions and analysis of data collected from a survey of drivers in Spain and Portugal regarding user preferences, highlighting the main functionalities and behavior that an advanced driver assistance system must have in order to grant it special importance on the road to prevent accidents and also to enable drivers to have a pleasant journey. Based on the results obtained from the survey, we developed and present a working prototype for an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), its architecture and rules systems that allowed us to create and test some scenarios in a real environment.5311-8814-F0ED | Sara Maria da Cruz Maia de Oliveira PaivaN/

Impact of Efficient Driving in Professional Bus Fleets

Diesel engines of the vehicles in the transport sector are responsible for most of the CO2 emissions into the environment. An alternative to reduce fuel consumption is to promote efficient driving techniques. The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of efficient driving on fuel consumption in professional fleets. Data captured from the engine control unit (ECU) of the vehicles are complemented with external information from weather stations and context data from the transport companies. The paper proposes linear and quadratic models in order to quantify the impact of all the terms influencing energy consumption. The analysis was made from the traces captured from a passenger transport company in Spain with more than 50 bus routes. 20 vehicles of five different models were monitored and 58 drivers participated in the study. The results indicate that efficient driving has significant influence on fuel consumption, which confirms efficient driving as a valid and economical option for reducing consumption and therefore emissions of harmful particles into the atmosphere. According to the proposed model, in average external conditions, a driver that increases efficiency from 25% to 75% can reach savings in fuel consumption of up to 16 L/100 km in the analysed bus fleet, which is a significant improvement considering the long distances covered by professionals of the transport sector

Desarrollo de un laboratorio abierto de enjambres de robots autónomos de limpieza

[ES] En el corto plazo, la industria del robot autónomo y de los drones será un factor de desarrollo importante. Tanto la fabricación de los propios dispositivos, como del desarrollo del software que los hace funcionar serán actividades empresariales de importancia en el sector TIC. No obstante, el futuro de los robots de trabajo autónomo es colaborar unos con otros y con el entorno que los rodea (adaptación al contexto). Para ello, deben de ser capaces de interactuar con otros equipos mediante protocolos de comunicación y sistemas de razonamiento. Por ello, en este trabajo se presenta una experiencia encaminada a la obtención de un sistema de trabajo colaborativo para que un grupo/enjambre de robots autónomos de limpieza puedan trabajar de forma conjunta. La experiencia se basa en un laboratorio abierto que permite a los alumnos proponer y realizar sus propios desarrollos. En el trabajo se presentan tanto los aspectos metodológicos de la experiencia, como los avances que se han conseguido realizar hasta la fecha.Este trabajo ha sido parcialmente financiado por el Instituto Universitario de Tecnología Industrial de Asturias (IUTA) a través del proyecto "Desarrollo de un sistema de trabajo colaborativo de robots autónomos de limpieza”.Pozueco, L.; Sánchez, JA.; G. Tuero, A.; Melendi, D.; García Fernández, R.; G. Pañeda, X.; Asenjo, N.... (2018). Desarrollo de un laboratorio abierto de enjambres de robots autónomos de limpieza. En XIII Jornadas de Ingeniería telemática (JITEL 2017). Libro de actas. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 356-362. https://doi.org/10.4995/JITEL2017.2017.6579OCS35636

Optimización de rutas para mejora de la eficiencia en la conducción

[ES] El sector del transporte es uno de los principales causantes de la emisión de partículas contaminantes del medioambiente. Entre las diferentes alternativas para la reducción de consumo y de emisión de partículas nocivas la más atractiva para las empresas de transporte profesional es la utilización de técnicas de conducción eficiente ya que permite aprovechar la flota de vehículos existente sin necesidad de invertir en nuevos vehículos y tecnología. En este trabajo se ha determinado cuál sería la técnica óptima de conducción para minimizar el consumo de combustible en una ruta. Los resultados pueden aplicarse en cursos de formación en conducción eficiente. Para los cálculos se han tomado datos reales de una flota profesional de autobuses, se ha obtenido un modelo de consumo y mediante optimización de rutas se ha determinado la técnica de conducción que minimiza el consumo en la ruta analizada. Los resultados indican que la conducción eficiente tiene una influencia muy significativa en el consumo de combustible. Con una conducción óptima podrían alcanzarse reducciones en el consumo de hasta 15 litros/100km, un 28% menos, en la ruta analizada, lo cual redunda en una reducción notable de consumo en el global de la compañía, considerando las grandes distancias recorridas por los profesionales del sector del transporte.Este trabajo ha sido financiado por la Comisión Europea (proyecto GlobalBLED SMEInst-10-2016- 2017), el Plan Nacional de Investigación (proyecto MINECO-13-TIN2013-41749-R) y el Plan PCTI del Principado de Asturias (proyecto GRUPIN-14-065).García Fernández, R.; Tuero, A.; Pozueco, L.; Pañeda, X.; Corcoba, V.; Sanchez, JA.; Melendi, D.... (2018). Optimización de rutas para mejora de la eficiencia en la conducción. En XIII Jornadas de Ingeniería telemática (JITEL 2017). Libro de actas. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 124-131. https://doi.org/10.4995/JITEL2017.2017.6554OCS12413

Economic Impact of the Use of Inertia in an Urban Bus Company

Public transport companies face great expenses. In order to be profitable companies, they need to reduce costs in all aspects. In addition, many countries have increased taxes to force transport companies to reduce their fuel consumption and, thus, greenhouse effect emissions. Efficient driving is the cheapest way to achieve this goal. In this paper, we analyze the economic impact of one of the most influential efficient driving techniques in an urban bus company. We calculate the difference of consumption between a well-performed deceleration using the inertia of the vehicle and a loss of speed obtained by using the brakes. For this purpose, we compare a real track performed by any driver in a precise vehicle with a simulated ideal track. To obtain the deceleration of the simulation, we develop a linear regression model on over 170,000 samples captured from the same vehicle over a period of one month. The results show that the costs of the vehicle under test in one month may be reduced by more than 2500