scholarly journals On-Board Road Friction Estimation Technique for Autonomous Driving Vehicle-Following Maneuvers

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 2197
Author(s):  
Stefania Santini ◽  
Nicola Albarella ◽  
Vincenzo Maria Arricale ◽  
Renato Brancati ◽  
Aleksandr Sakhnevych

In recent years, autonomous vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems have drawn a great deal of attention from both research and industry, because of their demonstrated benefit in reducing the rate of accidents or, at least, their severity. The main flaw of this system is related to the poor performances in adverse environmental conditions, due to the reduction of friction, which is mainly related to the state of the road. In this paper, a new model-based technique is proposed for real-time road friction estimation in different environmental conditions. The proposed technique is based on both bicycle model to evaluate the state of the vehicle and a tire Magic Formula model based on a slip-slope approach to evaluate the potential friction. The results, in terms of the maximum achievable grip value, have been involved in autonomous driving vehicle-following maneuvers, as well as the operating condition of the vehicle at which such grip value can be reached. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is disclosed via an extensive numerical analysis covering a wide range of environmental, traffic, and vehicle kinematic conditions. Results confirm the ability of the approach to properly automatically adapting the inter-vehicle space gap and to avoiding collisions also in adverse road conditions (e.g., ice, heavy rain).

Author(s):  
Gaojian Huang ◽  
Christine Petersen ◽  
Brandon J. Pitts

Semi-autonomous vehicles still require drivers to occasionally resume manual control. However, drivers of these vehicles may have different mental states. For example, drivers may be engaged in non-driving related tasks or may exhibit mind wandering behavior. Also, monitoring monotonous driving environments can result in passive fatigue. Given the potential for different types of mental states to negatively affect takeover performance, it will be critical to highlight how mental states affect semi-autonomous takeover. A systematic review was conducted to synthesize the literature on mental states (such as distraction, fatigue, emotion) and takeover performance. This review focuses specifically on five fatigue studies. Overall, studies were too few to observe consistent findings, but some suggest that response times to takeover alerts and post-takeover performance may be affected by fatigue. Ultimately, this review may help researchers improve and develop real-time mental states monitoring systems for a wide range of application domains.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 2405
Author(s):  
Heung-Gu Lee ◽  
Dong-Hyun Kang ◽  
Deok-Hwan Kim

Currently, the existing vehicle-centric semi-autonomous driving modules do not consider the driver’s situation and emotions. In an autonomous driving environment, when changing to manual driving, human–machine interface and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are essential to assist vehicle driving. This study proposes a human–machine interface that considers the driver’s situation and emotions to enhance the ADAS. A 1D convolutional neural network model based on multimodal bio-signals is used and applied to control semi-autonomous vehicles. The possibility of semi-autonomous driving is confirmed by classifying four driving scenarios and controlling the speed of the vehicle. In the experiment, by using a driving simulator and hardware-in-the-loop simulation equipment, we confirm that the response speed of the driving assistance system is 351.75 ms and the system recognizes four scenarios and eight emotions through bio-signal data.


Micromachines ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dingkang Wang ◽  
Connor Watkins ◽  
Huikai Xie

In recent years, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) has been drawing extensive attention both in academia and industry because of the increasing demand for autonomous vehicles. LiDAR is believed to be the crucial sensor for autonomous driving and flying, as it can provide high-density point clouds with accurate three-dimensional information. This review presents an extensive overview of Microelectronechanical Systems (MEMS) scanning mirrors specifically for applications in LiDAR systems. MEMS mirror-based laser scanners have unrivalled advantages in terms of size, speed and cost over other types of laser scanners, making them ideal for LiDAR in a wide range of applications. A figure of merit (FoM) is defined for MEMS mirrors in LiDAR scanners in terms of aperture size, field of view (FoV) and resonant frequency. Various MEMS mirrors based on different actuation mechanisms are compared using the FoM. Finally, a preliminary assessment of off-the-shelf MEMS scanned LiDAR systems is given.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien Schnebelen ◽  
Camilo Charron ◽  
Franck Mars

When manually steering a car, the driver’s visual perception of the driving scene and his or her motor actions to control the vehicle are closely linked. Since motor behaviour is no longer required in an automated vehicle, the sampling of the visual scene is affected. Autonomous driving typically results in less gaze being directed towards the road centre and a broader exploration of the driving scene, compared to manual driving. To examine the corollary of this situation, this study estimated the state of automation (manual or automated) on the basis of gaze behaviour. To do so, models based on partial least square regressions were computed by considering the gaze behaviour in multiple ways, using static indicators (percentage of time spent gazing at 13 areas of interests), dynamic indicators (transition matrices between areas) or both together. Analysis of the quality of predictions for the different models showed that the best result was obtained by considering both static and dynamic indicators. However, gaze dynamics played the most important role in distinguishing between manual and automated driving. This study may be relevant to the issue of driver monitoring in autonomous vehicles.


Author(s):  
Sai Rajeev Devaragudi ◽  
Bo Chen

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.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 475
Author(s):  
Alberto Díaz-Álvarez ◽  
Miguel Clavijo ◽  
Felipe Jiménez ◽  
Francisco Serradilla

Most of the tactic manoeuvres during driving require a certain understanding of the surrounding environment from which to devise our future behaviour. In this paper, a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) approach is used to model the lane change behaviour to identify when a driver is going to perform this manoeuvre. To that end, a slightly modified CNN architecture adapted to both spatial (i.e., surrounding environment) and non-spatial (i.e., rest of variables such as relative speed to the front vehicle) input variables. Anticipating a driver’s lane change intention means it is possible to use this information as a new source of data in wide range of different scenarios. One example of such scenarios might be the decision making process support for human drivers through Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) fed with the data of the surrounding cars in an inter-vehicular network. Another example might even be its use in autonomous vehicles by using the data of a specific driver profile to make automated driving more human-like. Several CNN architectures have been tested on a simulation environment to assess their performance. Results show that the selected architecture provides a higher degree of accuracy than random guessing (i.e., assigning a class randomly for each observation in the data set), and it can capture subtle differences in behaviour between different driving profiles.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1266
Author(s):  
Pedro J. Navarro ◽  
Leanne Miller ◽  
Francisca Rosique ◽  
Carlos Fernández-Isla ◽  
Alberto Gila-Navarro

The complex decision-making systems used for autonomous vehicles or advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) are being replaced by end-to-end (e2e) architectures based on deep-neural-networks (DNN). DNNs can learn complex driving actions from datasets containing thousands of images and data obtained from the vehicle perception system. This work presents the classification, design and implementation of six e2e architectures capable of generating the driving actions of speed and steering wheel angle directly on the vehicle control elements. The work details the design stages and optimization process of the convolutional networks to develop six e2e architectures. In the metric analysis the architectures have been tested with different data sources from the vehicle, such as images, XYZ accelerations and XYZ angular speeds. The best results were obtained with a mixed data e2e architecture that used front images from the vehicle and angular speeds to predict the speed and steering wheel angle with a mean error of 1.06%. An exhaustive optimization process of the convolutional blocks has demonstrated that it is possible to design lightweight e2e architectures with high performance more suitable for the final implementation in autonomous driving.


Author(s):  
Sandra Boric ◽  
Edgar Schiebel ◽  
Christian Schlögl ◽  
Michaela Hildebrandt ◽  
Christina Hofer ◽  
...  

Autonomous driving has become an increasingly relevant issue for policymakers, the industry, service providers, infrastructure companies, and science. This study shows how bibliometrics can be used to identify the major technological aspects of an emerging research field such as autonomous driving. We examine the most influential publications and identify research fronts of scientific activities until 2017 based on a bibliometric literature analysis. Using the science mapping approach, publications in the research field of autonomous driving were retrieved from Web of Science and then structured using the bibliometric software BibTechMon by the AIT (Austrian Institute of Technology). At the time of our analysis, we identified four research fronts in the field of autonomous driving: (I) Autonomous Vehicles and Infrastructure, (II) Driver Assistance Systems, (III) Autonomous Mobile Robots, and (IV) IntraFace, i.e., automated facial image analysis. Researchers were working extensively on technologies that support the navigation and collection of data. Our analysis indicates that research was moving towards autonomous navigation and infrastructure in the urban environment. A noticeable number of publications focused on technologies for environment detection in automated vehicles. Still, research pointed at the technological challenges to make automated driving safe.


10.29007/2n4h ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabina Alazzawi ◽  
Mathias Hummel ◽  
Pascal Kordt ◽  
Thorsten Sickenberger ◽  
Christian Wieseotte ◽  
...  

Recent technological advances in vehicle automation and connectivity have furthered the development of a wide range of innovative mobility concepts such as autonomous driving, on-demand services and electric mobility. Our study aimed at investigating the interplay of these concepts to efficiently reduce vehicle counts in urban environments, thereby reducing congestion levels and creating new public spaces to promote the quality of live in urban cities. For analysis, we implemented the aforementioned factors by introducing the concept of robo-taxis as an autonomous and shared mobility service. Using SUMO as the simulation framework, custom functionalities such as ride sharing, autonomous driving and advanced data processing were implemented as python methods via, and around, the TraCI interface. A passenger origin-destination matrix for our region of interest in Milan was derived from publically available mobile phone usage data and used for route input. Key evaluation parameters were the density-flow relationship, particulate-matter emissions, and person waiting- times. Based on these parameters, the critical transition rate from private cars to robo- taxis to reach a free-flow state was calculated. Our simulations show, that a transition rate of about 50% is required to achieve a significant reduction of traffic congestion levels in peak hours as indicated by mean travel times and vehicle flux. Assuming peak- shaving, e.g. through dynamic pricing promised by digitalization, of about 10%, the threshold transition rate drops to 30%. Based on these findings, we propose that introducing a robo-taxi fleet of 9500 vehicles, centered around mid-size 6 seaters, can solve traffic congestion and emission problems in Milan.


2004 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 249-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taehyun Shim ◽  
Donald Margolis

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