Mitigating Motion Sickness in Automated Vehicles with Vibration Cue System

<p>Motion sickness is very common in road transport. To guarantee ride comfort and user experience, there is an urgent need for effective solutions to motion sickness mitigation in semi- and fully-automated vehicles. Considering both effectiveness and user-friendliness, a vibration cue system is proposed to inform passengers of the upcoming vehicle movement through tactile stimulation. By integrating the motion planning results from automated driving algorithms, the vibration cueing timing and patterns are optimized with the theory of motion anticipation. Using a cushion-based prototype of vibration cue system, 20 participants were invited to evaluate this solution in two conditions of driving simulator experiments. Results show that with the proposed vibration cue system, it could also help participants to comprehend the cues and to generate motion anticipation. The participants’ motion sickness degrees were significantly lowered. This research may serve as one foundation for the detailed system development in practical applications.</p><p>(This article has been accepted for publication in <i>Ergonomics</i>, published by Taylor & Francis.)</p><br>

Optimization of the Motion Algorithm and Reduction of the External Dynamic Load of the Machinery Actuator in Translational and Rotational Modes

This article deals with the theoretical preconditions for creating a high-performance, universal earthmoving vehicle with continuous motion that can create long grooves of different depths and widths in the soil using a single actuator. For this purpose, a new symmetrical rotor actuator was developed, which operates in translational and rotational modes due to the two-level actuator with a double-swivel mounting on the base chassis, instead of the traditional single-swivel mounting. Its use eliminates the possibility of leveling the thickness of the shavings when digging the soil. The rotor-actuator-movement algorithm at the front part was developed from a combination of vehicle movement and cyclic-lateral-actuator movement. In real practice, this means digging up the soil with even shavings. The implementation of the developed algorithm in the physical model of the symmetrical actuator confirmed the possibility of balancing the thickness of the shavings, which are cut by the rotor buckets with up to 10% accuracy. The difference between the results in determining the thickness of the shavings analytically and experimentally is 12% with a confidence interval of 0.95.

Efficiency Assessment of a Signalized Roundabout and a Traffic Intersection in Baghdad City

In Baghdad city, Iraq, the traffic volumes have rapidly grown during the last 15 years. Road networks need to reevaluate and decide if they are operating properly or not regarding the increase in the number of vehicles. Al-Jadriyah intersection (a four-leg signalized intersection) and Kamal Junblat Square (a multi-lane roundabout), which are two important intersections in Baghdad city with high traffic volumes, were selected to be reevaluated by the SIDRA package in this research. Traffic volume and vehicle movement data were abstracted from videotapes by the Smart Traffic Analyzer (STA) Software. The performance measures include delay and LOS. The analysis results by SIDRA Intersection 8.0.1 show that the performance of the roundabout is better than the signalized intersection but experiences high delay, and low LOS. Therefore, alternatives are proposed to improve the performance for current and future traffic volumes with low-medium delays.

Exploring App-Based Taxi Movement Patterns from Large-Scale Geolocation Data

This study is designed to leverage ubiquitous mobile computing techniques on exploring app-based taxi movement patterns in large cities. To study patterns at different scales, we comprehensively explore both occupied and unoccupied vehicle movement characteristics through not only individual trips but also their aggregations. Moran’s I and its variations are applied to explore spatial autocorrelations among different rides. PageRank centrality is applied for a functional network representing traffic flows to discover places of interest. Gyration radius measures the scope of passenger mobility and driver passenger searching. Moreover, cumulative distribution and data visualization techniques are adopted for trip level characteristics and features analysis. The results indicate that the app-based taxi services are serving more neighborhoods other than downtown areas by taking large proportion of relatively shorter trips and contributing to net increase in total taxi ridership although net decrease in downtown areas. The spatial autocorrelations are significant not only within each service but also among services. With the smartphone-based applications, app-based taxi services are able to search passengers in a larger area and move more efficiently during both occupied and unoccupied periods. Mining from huge empty trip trajectory by app-based taxis, we also identify the existence of stationary/stops state and circulations.

Research on VANET vehicle movement modeling in ITS

At present, Traffic simulation has become the most widely used tool in operational research and system analysis. This paper studies VANET’s vehicle movement modeling theory in the Intelligent Transportation System. It build Car movement model by OPNET Modeler soft. It simulates VANET communication process, evaluates the entire performance of the network, which can offer reference to designing and optimizing the Vehicle Ad hoc Network.

Effect of partial lockdown due to Covid-19 pandemic on PM10 concentration in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Despite their proven effectiveness in combating the pandemic of COVID-19, measures of social isolation, quarantines, and lockdowns have drastic consequences in the social and economic spheres. This paper presents results from an ongoing study in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, to evaluate the effect of social isolation on MP10 concentration. The monitoring point was chosen in a wooded area within a university campus. Social isolation was analyzed in terms of vehicle movements recorded by speed cameras, during all phases following the partial lockdown (PL) instituted in the city. The social isolation index (SDI) showed a maximum isolation percentage of 49.5%, reached in the first week of the PL, with a subsequent continuous downward trend. The results showed a 65.2% reduction in PM10 due to the PL, when comparing the mean values monitored before (22.2 ± 3.0 µg m-3) and during (7.7 ± 4.2 µg m-3) the PL. The relationship between vehicle movement and PM10 concentrations in the monitoring region was evidenced and found to be significant (r(XY) = 0.782, p-value = 0.000). Such reduction, observed in such a short term, but due to force majeure, certainly has beneficial effects on the population's health, reinforcing the reflection about the positive impacts that could come with policies that favor the reduction of vehicle movement in the cities.

Investigation of Vehicle Stability with Consideration of Suspension Performance

The issue of movement stability remains highly relevant considering increasing vehicle speeds. The evaluation of vehicle stability parameters and the modeling of specific movement modes is a complex task, as no universal evaluation criteria have been established. The main task in modeling car stability is an integrated assessment of the vehicle’s road interactions and identification of relationships. The main system affecting the vehicle’s road interaction is the suspension of the vehicle. Vehicle suspension is required to provide constant wheel to road surface contact, thus creating the preconditions for stability of vehicle movement. At the same time, it must provide the maximum possible body insulation against the effect of unevennesses on the road surface. Combining the two marginal prerequisites is challenging, and the issue has not been definitively solved to this day. Inaccurate alignment of the suspension and damping characteristics of the vehicle suspension impairs the stability of the vehicle, and passengers feel discomfort due to increased vibrations of the vehicle body. As a result, the driving speed is artificially restricted, the durability of the vehicle body is reduced, and the transported cargo is affected. In the study, analytical computational and experimental research methods were used. Specialized vehicle-road interaction assessment programs were developed for theoretical investigation. The methodology developed for assessing vehicle movement stability may be used for the following purposes: design and improvement of vehicle suspension and other mechanisms that determine vehicle stability; analysis of road spans assigned with characteristic vehicle movement settings; road accident situation analysis; design of road structures and establishment of certain operational restrictions on the road structures. A vehicle suspension test bench that included original structure mechanisms that simulate the effect of the road surface was designed and manufactured to test the results of theoretical calculations describing the work of the vehicle suspension and to study various suspension parameters. Experimental investigations were carried out by examining the vibrations of vehicle suspension elements caused by unevenness on the road surface.

Evaluation of suspended rail vehicle movement parameters

Niniejsza publikacja została poświęcona ocenie parametrów ruchowych koncepcyjnego pojazdu kolei podwieszanej, którą dokonano w oparciu o jego charakterystykę trakcyjną oraz możliwości dynamiczne. W pierwszej kolejności skrótowo opisano konstrukcję proponowanego pojazdu wraz z wyszczególnieniem najważniejszych założeń projektowych. Następnie skupiono się na metodyce oraz samym wykreśleniu charakterystyki trakcyjnej pojazdu, jak również przebiegu jego przyspieszenia w funkcji prędkości. Na koniec poddano ocenie układ hamulcowy poprzez wyznaczenie średniego opóźnienia hamowania w zależności od jego rodzaju. Artykuł ten powstał na podstawie pracy dyplomowej pt. „Koncepcja wagonu silnikowego kolei podwieszanej”, na wydziale Mechanicznym Politechniki Gdańskiej.

A vehicle re-identification framework based on the improved multi-branch feature fusion network

Vehicle re-identification (re-id) aims to solve the problems of matching and identifying the same vehicle under the scenes across multiple surveillance cameras. For public security and intelligent transportation system (ITS), it is extremely important to locate the target vehicle quickly and accurately in the massive vehicle database. However, re-id of the target vehicle is very challenging due to many factors, such as the orientation variations, illumination changes, occlusion, low resolution, rapid vehicle movement, and amounts of similar vehicle models. In order to resolve the difficulties and enhance the accuracy for vehicle re-id, in this work, we propose an improved multi-branch network in which global–local feature fusion, channel attention mechanism and weighted local feature are comprehensively combined. Firstly, the fusion of global and local features is adopted to obtain more information of the vehicle and enhance the learning ability of the model; Secondly, the channel attention module in the feature extraction branch is embedded to extract the personalized features of the targeting vehicle; Finally, the background and noise information on feature extraction is controlled by weighted local feature. The results of comprehensive experiments on the mainstream evaluation datasets including VeRi-776, VRIC, and VehicleID indicate that our method can effectively improve the accuracy of vehicle re-identification and is superior to the state-of-the-art methods.

Improving the mathematical stability in the numerical simulation of the vehicle movement with an electronic movement control system

The aim of the study is to determine the influence of the calculated radius type on the calculated parameters of the vehicle movement, equipped with an electronic movement control system. A numerical simulation of the vehicle movement equipped with an electronic movement control system was carried out. Under calculated conditions, there are forces that disrupt the stable and controlled vehicle movement. The studies carried out have shown that in the numerical simulation of the parameters of the vehicle movement, the use of a dynamic radius instead of a rolling radius never affects the calculated values of the vehicle’s longitudinal shifts. In this case, the values of the lateral shifts and the turning angle of the vehicle on a dry hard surface change insignificantly, but there is a significant mathematical instability of the solution. On a wet hard surface, the influence of the calculated radii types on the characteristics of the simulated vehicle movement is preserved, but this influence is less pronounced.