Development of a Miniaturized Autonomous Vehicle: Modification of a 1:18 Scale RC Car for Autonomous Operation

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dwarkesh Iyengar ◽  
Diane L. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Response Speed ◽  
Urban Traffic ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Coordinate Frame ◽  
Graphic User Interface ◽  
Scaled Model ◽  
Autonomous Operation ◽  
Master Station

Autonomous vehicles are a subject of intense research interest, and are being approached by many researchers in different ways. Some of these approaches are based upon pure simulation, while others involve investigations using hardware. One possible approach, which can be useful when investigating how autonomous vehicles might interact, involves the use of physical scaled model vehicles, and the development of an appropriate vehicle is the focus of this paper. For this purpose, a commercially available 1:18 radio controlled car is remodeled and modified. An onboard microcontroller unit (MCU) is used for sensor data acquisition and preliminary signal conditioning as well as actuator control. The sensor array includes a gyroscope/accelerometer, a compass and speed encoder to find the angular and linear position of the car in a local coordinate frame as well as a range finder to detect impending obstacles in the vehicle’s planned path. This information is sent over a serial communication protocol to a Master station via a 2.4 GHz wireless module. The master station consists of a National Instruments (NI) myRIO real-time FPGA module where the local coordinates are used to formulate the position of the car in global coordinates and a user defined control scheme is implemented and the appropriate actuator signal is sent back wirelessly to the MCU on the car. The main purpose of using an independent and offsite control station is to isolate the main processing and increase response speed to changing environmental factors. Furthermore, the myRIO contains the dynamic model of the car which can be modified by linking it to a personal computer station running the LabVIEW graphic user interface (GUI). This adds greater flexibility to the overall system, thus allowing the user to focus on the different control schemes to be implemented through the hardware setup. This setup will be replicated for more cars, set in an urban traffic environment, and the interactions between the cars can then be studied and optimized.

scholarly journals Autonomous Vehicles within the Urban Space and Transport Security Challenges: Legal Aspect

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Denis V. Iroshnikov ◽  
Lyubov Yu. Larina ◽  
Aleksandr I. Sidorkin
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Legal Aspect ◽  
Urban Traffic ◽  
Autonomous Operation ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Operation Rules ◽  
Vehicle Inspection

Nowadays autonomous vehicles are getting widespread use in different parts of the world. In some countries, they are being tested within the urban traffic whereas other counties have been already operating them. Such vehicles possess a number of obvious advantages. We cannot but agree that these cars are the future. However, before complete implementation and mass use of autonomous transport on public roads, it is necessary to resolve a number of problems concerning their safety towards road-users. Except for ethical, economic, and other aspects, it also embraces the legal aspect. The article analyses legal problems of ensuring transport security when using autonomous vehicles. It also touches upon the issues of obligations and liability. Special attention is paid to the matters of criminal liability for offences involving an autonomous vehicle. The conducted legal research allowed concluding that it is necessary to improve legislation in the sphere of operating such vehicles. It is essential to enshrine in law autonomous vehicles (whether fully-autonomous or partially-autonomous) operation rules, oblige their owners to perform regular diagnostic assessment, and to add demands to periodic vehicle inspection. When regulating criminal liability for harm caused by a self-driving vehicle, one must proceed from the layer of its autonomy which stipulates bringing the general public to responsibility.

scholarly journals A Game Theory-Based Approach for Modeling Autonomous Vehicle Behavior in Congested, Urban Lane-Changing Scenarios

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1523
Author(s):  
Nikita Smirnov ◽  
Yuzhou Liu ◽  
Aso Validi ◽  
Walter Morales-Alvarez ◽  
Cristina Olaverri-Monreal
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Urban Traffic ◽  
Road User ◽  
Lane Change ◽  
Traffic Light ◽  
User Interactions ◽  
Lane Changing

Autonomous vehicles are expected to display human-like behavior, at least to the extent that their decisions can be intuitively understood by other road users. If this is not the case, the coexistence of manual and autonomous vehicles in a mixed environment might affect road user interactions negatively and might jeopardize road safety. To this end, it is highly important to design algorithms that are capable of analyzing human decision-making processes and of reproducing them. In this context, lane-change maneuvers have been studied extensively. However, not all potential scenarios have been considered, since most works have focused on highway rather than urban scenarios. We contribute to the field of research by investigating a particular urban traffic scenario in which an autonomous vehicle needs to determine the level of cooperation of the vehicles in the adjacent lane in order to proceed with a lane change. To this end, we present a game theory-based decision-making model for lane changing in congested urban intersections. The model takes as input driving-related parameters related to vehicles in the intersection before they come to a complete stop. We validated the model by relying on the Co-AutoSim simulator. We compared the prediction model outcomes with actual participant decisions, i.e., whether they allowed the autonomous vehicle to drive in front of them. The results are promising, with the prediction accuracy being 100% in all of the cases in which the participants allowed the lane change and 83.3% in the other cases. The false predictions were due to delays in resuming driving after the traffic light turned green.

Pedestrians, Autonomous Vehicles, and Cities

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Millard-Ball
Keyword(s):  
Travel Behavior ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
Urban Traffic ◽  
Risk Averse ◽  
Strategic Interactions ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Self Driving Cars ◽  
Time Autonomous

Autonomous vehicles, popularly known as self-driving cars, have the potential to transform travel behavior. However, existing analyses have ignored strategic interactions with other road users. In this article, I use game theory to analyze the interactions between pedestrians and autonomous vehicles, with a focus on yielding at crosswalks. Because autonomous vehicles will be risk-averse, the model suggests that pedestrians will be able to behave with impunity, and autonomous vehicles may facilitate a shift toward pedestrian-oriented urban neighborhoods. At the same time, autonomous vehicle adoption may be hampered by their strategic disadvantage that slows them down in urban traffic.

scholarly journals A Connected Autonomous Vehicle Testbed: Capabilities, Experimental Processes and Lessons Learned

Automation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
Thomas Kent ◽  
Anthony Pipe ◽  
Arthur Richards ◽  
Jim Hutchinson ◽  
Wolfgang Schuster
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Stable Set ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
High Level ◽  
Key Steps

VENTURER was one of the first three UK government funded research and innovation projects on Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) and was conducted predominantly in the South West region of the country. A series of increasingly complex scenarios conducted in an urban setting were used to: (i) evaluate the technology created as a part of the project; (ii) systematically assess participant responses to CAVs and; (iii) inform the development of potential insurance models and legal frameworks. Developing this understanding contributed key steps towards facilitating the deployment of CAVs on UK roads. This paper aims to describe the VENTURER Project trials, their objectives and detail some of the key technologies used. Importantly we aim to introduce some informative challenges that were overcame and the subsequent project and technological lessons learned in a hope to help others plan and execute future CAV research. The project successfully integrated several technologies crucial to CAV development. These included, a Decision Making System using behaviour trees to make high level decisions; A pilot-control system to smoothly and comfortably turn plans into throttle and steering actuation; Sensing and perception systems to make sense of raw sensor data; Inter-CAV Wireless communication capable of demonstrating vehicle-to-vehicle communication of potential hazards. The closely coupled technology integration, testing and participant-focused trial schedule led to a greatly improved understanding of the engineering and societal barriers that CAV development faces. From a behavioural standpoint the importance of reliability and repeatability far outweighs a need for novel trajectories, while the sensor-to-perception capabilities are critical, the process of verification and validation is extremely time consuming. Additionally, the added capabilities that can be leveraged from inter-CAV communications shows the potential for improved road safety that could result. Importantly, to effectively conduct human factors experiments in the CAV sector under consistent and repeatable conditions, one needs to define a scripted and stable set of scenarios that uses reliable equipment and a controllable environmental setting. This requirement can often be at odds with making significant technology developments, and if both are part of a project’s goals then they may need to be separated from each other.

MoVE: A Mobility Virtual Environment for Autonomous Vehicle Testing

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Compere ◽  
Garrett Holden ◽  
Otto Legon ◽  
Roberto Martinez Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Time History ◽  
Experimental Tests ◽  
Coordinate Frame ◽  
Medical Evacuation ◽  
Post Process ◽  
Common Framework

Abstract Autonomous vehicle researchers need a common framework in which to test autonomous vehicles and algorithms along a realism spectrum from simulation-only to real vehicles and real people. The community needs an open-source, publicly available framework, with source code, in which to develop, simulate, execute, and post-process multi-vehicle tests. This paper presents a Mobility Virtual Environment (MoVE) for testing autonomous system algorithms, vehicles, and their interactions with real and simulated vehicles and pedestrians. The result is a network-centric framework designed to represent multiple real and multiple virtual vehicles interacting and possibly communicating with each other in a common coordinate frame with a common timestamp. This paper presents a literature review of comparable autonomous vehicle softwares, presents MoVE concepts and architecture, and presents three experimental tests with multiple virtual and real vehicles, with real pedestrians. The first scenario is a traffic wave simulation using a real lead vehicle and 3 real follower vehicles. The second scenario is a medical evacuation scenario with 2 real pedestrians and 1 real vehicles. Real pedestrians are represented using live-GPS-followers streaming GPS position from mobile phones over the cellular network. Time-history and spatial plots of real and virtual vehicles are presented with vehicle-to-vehicle distance calculations indicating where and when potential collisions were detected and avoided. The third scenario highlights the avoid() behavior successfully avoiding other virtual vehicles and 1 real pedestrian in a small outdoor area. The MoVE set of concepts and interfaces are implemented as open-source software available for use and customization within the autonomous vehicle community. MoVE is freely available under the GPLv3 open-source license at gitlab.com/comperem/move.

scholarly journals TrafficPredict: Trajectory Prediction for Heterogeneous Traffic-Agents

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 6120-6127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuexin Ma ◽  
Xinge Zhu ◽  
Sibo Zhang ◽  
Ruigang Yang ◽  
Wenping Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Large City ◽  
Urban Traffic ◽  
Heterogeneous Traffic ◽  
Prediction Algorithm ◽  
Trajectory Prediction ◽  
Long Short Term Memory ◽  
Traffic Agents

To safely and efficiently navigate in complex urban traffic, autonomous vehicles must make responsible predictions in relation to surrounding traffic-agents (vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians, etc.). A challenging and critical task is to explore the movement patterns of different traffic-agents and predict their future trajectories accurately to help the autonomous vehicle make reasonable navigation decision. To solve this problem, we propose a long short-term memory-based (LSTM-based) realtime traffic prediction algorithm, TrafficPredict. Our approach uses an instance layer to learn instances’ movements and interactions and has a category layer to learn the similarities of instances belonging to the same type to refine the prediction. In order to evaluate its performance, we collected trajectory datasets in a large city consisting of varying conditions and traffic densities. The dataset includes many challenging scenarios where vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians move among one another. We evaluate the performance of TrafficPredict on our new dataset and highlight its higher accuracy for trajectory prediction by comparing with prior prediction methods.

Grid-based Environment Estimation for Local Autonomous Vehicle Navigation

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Tanzmeister
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Test Vehicle ◽  
Safety Critical ◽  
Environment Model ◽  
Reliable Model ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle Navigation ◽  
Grid Based

This dissertation is focused on the environment model for automated vehicles. A reliable model of the local environment available in real-time is a prerequisite to enable almost any useful ­activity performed by a robot, such as planning motions to fulfill tasks. It is particularly important in safety critical applications, such as for autonomous vehicles in regular traffic. In this thesis, novel concepts for local mapping, tracking, the detection of principal moving directions, cost evaluations in motion planning, and road course estimation have been developed. An object- and sensor-independent grid representation forms the basis of all presented methods enabling a generic and robust estimation of the environment. All approaches have been evaluated with sensor data from real road scenarios, and their performance has been experimentally demonstrated with a test vehicle. ...

A Sensor Simulation Framework for Training and Testing Robots and Autonomous Vehicles

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Asher Elmquist ◽  
Radu Serban ◽  
Dan Negrut
Keyword(s):  
Computer Simulation ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Simulation Framework ◽  
Unstructured Environments ◽  
Physics Simulation ◽  
Virtual Sensing ◽  
Simulation Task ◽  
Reduced Scale

Abstract Computer simulation can be a useful tool when designing robots expected to operate independently in unstructured environments. In this context, one needs to simulate the dynamics of the robot’s mechanical system, the environment in which the robot operates, and the sensors which facilitate the robot’s perception of the environment. Herein, we focus on the sensing simulation task by presenting a virtual sensing framework built alongside an open-source, multi-physics simulation platform called Chrono. This framework supports camera, lidar, GPS, and IMU simulation. We discuss their modeling as well as the noise and distortion implemented to increase the realism of the synthetic sensor data. We close with two examples that show the sensing simulation framework at work: one pertains to a reduced scale autonomous vehicle and the second is related to a vehicle driven in a digital replica of a Madison neighborhood.

MPC-Based Control of Autonomous Vehicles With Localized Path Planning for Obstacle Avoidance Under Uncertainties

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sai Rajeev Devaragudi ◽  
Bo Chen
Keyword(s):  
Path Planning ◽  
Obstacle Avoidance ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Autonomous Driving ◽  
Obstacle Detection ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Constant Time ◽  
Longitudinal Motion ◽  
Driver Assistance Systems

Abstract This paper presents a Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach for longitudinal and lateral control of autonomous vehicles with a real-time local path planning algorithm. A heuristic graph search method (A* algorithm) combined with piecewise Bezier curve generation is implemented for obstacle avoidance in autonomous driving applications. Constant time headway control is implemented for a longitudinal motion to track lead vehicles and maintain a constant time gap. MPC is used to control the steering angle and the tractive force of the autonomous vehicle. Furthermore, a new method of developing Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) algorithms and vehicle controllers using Model-In-the-Loop (MIL) testing is explored with the use of PreScan®. With PreScan®, various traffic scenarios are modeled and the sensor data are simulated by using physics-based sensor models, which are fed to the controller for data processing and motion planning. Obstacle detection and collision avoidance are demonstrated using the presented MPC controller.

scholarly journals An Audification and Visualization System (AVS) of an Autonomous Vehicle for Blind and Deaf People Based on Deep Learning

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (22) ◽  
pp. 5035 ◽  
Author(s):  
Son ◽  
Jeong ◽  
Lee
Keyword(s):  
Deep Learning ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Computational Time ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Instrument Cluster ◽  
Text Data ◽  
Visualization System ◽  
Cloud Server

When blind and deaf people are passengers in fully autonomous vehicles, an intuitive and accurate visualization screen should be provided for the deaf, and an audification system with speech-to-text (STT) and text-to-speech (TTS) functions should be provided for the blind. However, these systems cannot know the fault self-diagnosis information and the instrument cluster information that indicates the current state of the vehicle when driving. This paper proposes an audification and visualization system (AVS) of an autonomous vehicle for blind and deaf people based on deep learning to solve this problem. The AVS consists of three modules. The data collection and management module (DCMM) stores and manages the data collected from the vehicle. The audification conversion module (ACM) has a speech-to-text submodule (STS) that recognizes a user’s speech and converts it to text data, and a text-to-wave submodule (TWS) that converts text data to voice. The data visualization module (DVM) visualizes the collected sensor data, fault self-diagnosis data, etc., and places the visualized data according to the size of the vehicle’s display. The experiment shows that the time taken to adjust visualization graphic components in on-board diagnostics (OBD) was approximately 2.5 times faster than the time taken in a cloud server. In addition, the overall computational time of the AVS system was approximately 2 ms faster than the existing instrument cluster. Therefore, because the AVS proposed in this paper can enable blind and deaf people to select only what they want to hear and see, it reduces the overload of transmission and greatly increases the safety of the vehicle. If the AVS is introduced in a real vehicle, it can prevent accidents for disabled and other passengers in advance.

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