Modelling of the shape of railway transition curves from the point of view of passenger comfort

In the past, railway transition curves were not used. Instead of it, a simple connection of the straight track and circular arc was applied. Nowadays, such simplicity is not allowed due to the increasing vehicle operating velocities. It is mainly visible in the high-speed train lines, where long curves are used. The article aims to develop a new shape of railway transition curves for which passenger travel comfort will be as high as possible. Considerations in this paper concern the polynomials of 9th- and 11th-degrees, which were adopted to the mathematical model of the mentioned shape of curves. The study's authors applied a 2-axle rail vehicle model combined with mathematically understood optimisation methods. The advanced vehicle model can better assign the dynamical properties of railway transition curves to freight and passenger vehicles. The mentioned model was adopted to simulate rail vehicle movement in both cases of the shape of transition curves and the shape of circular arc (for comparison of the results). Passenger comfort, described by European Standard EN 12299, was used as the assessment criterion. The work showed that the method using the 2-axle railway vehicle model combined with mathematically understood optimisation works correctly, and the optimisation of the transition curve shape is possible. The current study showed that the 3rd-degree parabola (the shape of the curve traditionally used in railway engineering) is not always the optimum shape. In many cases (especially for the long curves), the optimum shape of curves is between the standard transition curves and the linear curvature of the 3rd-degree parabola. The new shapes of the railway transition curves obtained when the passenger comfort is taken into account result in new railway transition curves shapes. In the authors' opinion, the results presented in the current work are a novelty in optimisation and the properties assessment of railway transition curves.

Three airports

The airport terminals in Perm, Saratov and Kemerovo created by Asadov Architectural bureau are presented. General concepts of complexes, architectural and interior solutions for passenger terminals, as well as elaboration of design codes of administrative and technical buildings are given. Particular attention is paid to passenger comfort and safety.

Passenger comfort evaluation of the stowing and unloading luggage task in high-speed trains: Fusion of R-DEMATEL and FNN

At present, high-speed trains have become popular modern transportation. As a significant part of the high-speed train riding activity, the stowing and unloading luggage task has its characteristics. To comprehensively and reasonably evaluate passenger comfort of the stowing and unloading luggage task in high-speed trains. In this paper, passenger behavior characteristics are firstly analyzed by the author, the theoretical architecture of passenger comfort evaluation is constructed with the perspective of product aesthetics and ergonomics, and then the process of the passenger comfort evaluation is put forward. Secondly, a combination of Rough Number (RN) and Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) (i.e. R-DEMATEL) is utilized to solve the centrality degree of comfort influencing factors and determine comfort evaluation indexes. Furthermore, the passenger comfort evaluation model with Fuzzy Neural Network (FNN) is constructed and trained. After that, the sample data of the evaluation are collected through the simulated experiment of the stowing and unloading luggage task, and they are trained with FNN comparing to Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN). Eventually, the result of examples testing is verified that the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Novel Methods In Training Autonomous Vehicles For Urban Roads

<div>This thesis presents the development and application of a novel platform to train autonomous vehicles (AV) for urban roads. Interactive and immersive virtual reality (VR) environments are developed for the collection of mobility preference, behaviour, movement, and orientation data. The resulting naturalistic data can be used directly to train AV control systems. This platform is exemplified in an end-to-end case study resulting in a multi-objective braking system which maximizes both pedestrian safety and passenger comfort. It begins with the development of an immersive VR pedestrian road-crossing environment and compilation of a unique, naturalistic dataset. A vehicle agent is then successfully trained against the dataset, learning a multi-objective brake control policy using deep reinforcement learning methods and reducing the negative influence on passenger comfort by half while maintaining safe braking operation. This platform offers the opportunity to simulate complex, human-in-the-loop scenarios AVs will inevitably face and train them for these scenarios.</div>

Multi-objective optimization for autonomous driving strategy based on Deep Q Network

Autonomous driving is an important development direction of automobile technology, and driving strategy is the core of the autonomous driving system. Most works in this area focus on single-objective tasks, such as maximizing vehicle speed or lane-keeping, and rare attention has been paid to the quality of driving skills. Therefore, a multi-objective learning method is proposed for autonomous driving strategy based on deep Q-network, where two optimization objectives are involved, i.e., vehicle speed and passenger comfort. An end-to-end autonomous driving model is designed by using vehicle front camera images as inputs to the Q-network and makes decisions based on the output Q values. Considering the vehicle speed and passenger comfort, the reward function is designed for multi-objective optimization. To evaluate the effectiveness of the method, training and testing are performed in a simulator, and a single-objective strategy with the goal of maximizing speed is designed for comparison. The results show that the proposed multi-objective autonomous driving strategy can strike a balance between vehicle speed and passenger comfort. Compared with the single-objective strategy, the multi-objective strategy has a significant improvement in comfort, while the average speed is only slightly reduced.

Prototyping, Testing, and Redesign of a Three-Wheel Trekking Wheelchair for Accessible Tourism Applications

This work is part of the project called “Gölem project”, started in 2017, about special devices developed to enable the so-called Accessible Tourism. This project aims to design and develop a trekking wheelchair for people with impaired mobility. After an initial phase of design and prototyping, the testing phase has now begun. The objective is to validate several aspects of the design, concerning basic kinematics and dynamics, passenger comfort and physical effort of the carriers. This paper describes the development of qualitative tests for drivability and balance validation of this first prototype. At this stage, a list of features to be investigated was made, suitable trekking paths were chosen, and qualitative experimental field tests were performed. Then, the design of the prototype was modified according to these first experimental results, to improve the wheelchair characteristics. The prototype is now undergoing the modification phase, then further testing will be performed with the use of specific instrumental devices to evaluate the wheelchair itself and to perform the kinematic, dynamical, and comfort characterization.

Operation of T-Foils and Stern Tabs to Improve Passenger Comfort on High-Speed Ferries

High-speed ferries of around 100 m length cruising at around 40 knots can cause significant passenger discomfort in head waves. This is due to the frequencies of encountering waves, of maximum hull response to encountered waves and of maximum passenger discomfort all falling within a similar range. In this paper, the benefit obtained by fitting active T-foils and stern tabs to control heave and pitch in head waves is considered. Ship motion responses are computed by numerical integration in the time domain including unsteady control actions using a time domain, high-speed strip theory. This obviates the need to identify transfer functions, the computed time responses including nonlinear hull immersion terms. The largest passenger vertical accelerations occur at forward locations and are best controlled by a forward located T-foil acting in combination with active stern tabs. Various feedback control algorithms have been considered and it is found that pitch damping control gives the greatest improvement in passenger comfort at forward positions. Operation in adaptive and nonlinear modes so that the control deflections are maximized under all conditions give the greatest benefit and can reduce passenger motion sickness incidence (MSI) by up to 25% in a 3-m head sea on the basis of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recommendations for calculation of MSI for a 90-minute seaway passage.