scholarly journals Autonomous Shuttle Bus for Public Transportation: A Review

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2917
Author(s):  
Calin Iclodean ◽  
Nicolae Cordos ◽  
Bogdan Ovidiu Varga
Keyword(s):  
Public Transportation ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Rapid Evolution ◽  
Autonomous Driving ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Passenger Transport ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
Public Road ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pilot Programs

The rapid evolution of autonomous technology in the field of automotive and information technology (IT) has made it possible to implement autonomous vehicles (AVs) for public passenger transport. Although the shuttle bus transport capacities currently in use are low (maximum 15 people), the use of these transport units in large urban agglomerations is beneficial for society. The current paper is written to review the current AV implementation with respect to shuttle buses with its direct implications in their scientific evolution, with direct links to the legal and social aspects of public transportation all over the world. A critical aspect that is presented in the paper is the legal framework of autonomous driving, which is extremely uneven around the globe, with the direct impact of autonomous shuttle bus exploitation. As the legislation on AVs presents some shortcomings in the approval, registration, and public road implementation of these vehicles, many of the world’s major cities have found ways to integrate them into testing programs, establishing the basis for future comprehensive legislative measures in this highly dynamic scientific domain. The current technological solutions adopted by several autonomous shuttle bus producers will be presented with an exhaustive overview of each major component. The aspects of the control algorithm, with its complicated layers of security and perturbance factors, will be explained in detail. Thus, in some countries/cities, autonomous shuttle buses have been implemented on less-traveled routes where they can travel at speeds up to 25 km/h without hindering the public’s circulation, such as university campuses, industrial areas, airports, and sports bases. Some countries/cities use autonomous shuttle buses for pilot programs related to passenger transport, while others use them in postal transport and others for scientific purposes. In all of these situations, the first step in autonomous driving has been taken. The paper also makes an evaluation of the social factors that are a consequence of the mass introduction of autonomous driving as a means of public transportation. Autonomous shuttle buses are becoming a part of everyday life in big cities. Their acceptance as a strategic means of transport depends on their efficiency in daily services; through its efficiency, this means of transport will become a game-changer once its benefits become not only known but experienced by a large number of users.

Social Force Control for Human-Like Autonomous Driving

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
DoHyun Daniel Yoon ◽  
Beshah Ayalew
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Autonomous Driving ◽  
Social Force ◽  
Cruise Control ◽  
Lane Changing ◽  
Safe Navigation ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
The Social ◽  
Efficient Integration

An autonomous driving control system that incorporates notions from human-like social driving could facilitate an efficient integration of hybrid traffic where fully autonomous vehicles (AVs) and human operated vehicles (HOVs) are expected to coexist. This paper aims to develop such an autonomous vehicle control model using the social-force concepts, which was originally formulated for modeling the motion of pedestrians in crowds. In this paper, the social force concept is adapted to vehicular traffic where constituent navigation forces are defined as a target force, object forces, and lane forces. Then, nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) scheme is formulated to mimic the predictive planning behavior of social human drivers where they are considered to optimize the total social force they perceive. The performance of the proposed social force-based autonomous driving control scheme is demonstrated via simulations of an ego-vehicle in multi-lane road scenarios. From adaptive cruise control (ACC) to smooth lane-changing behaviors, the proposed model provided a flexible yet efficient driving control enabling a safe navigation in various situations while maintaining reasonable vehicle dynamics.

scholarly journals Shared Autonomous Vehicles: Potentials for a Sustainable Mobility and Risks of Unintended Effects

10.29007/rg73 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Pakusch ◽  
Gunnar Stevens ◽  
Paul Bossauer
Keyword(s):  
Public Transportation ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Paired Comparison ◽  
Autonomous Driving ◽  
User Preferences ◽  
Unintended Effects ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Travel Mode ◽  
Mobility Behavior

Automated and connected cars could significantly reduce congestion and emissions through a more efficient flow of traffic and a reduction in the number of vehicles. An increase in demand for driving with autonomous vehicles is also conceivable due to higher comfort and improved quality of time using driverless cars. So far, empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis is missing. To analyze the influence of autonomous driving on mobility behavior and to uncover user preferences, which serve as an indicator for future travel mode choices, we conducted an online survey with a paired comparison of current and future travel modes with 302 German participants. The results do not confirm the hypothesis that ownership will become an outdated model in the future. Instead they suggest that private cars, whether traditional or fully automated, will remain the preferred travel mode. At the same time, carsharing will benefit from full automation more than private cars. However, findings indicate that the growth of carsharing will mainly be at the expense of public transport, showing that more effort should be placed in making public transportation more attractive if sustainable mobility is to be developed.

scholarly journals The opportunity of shared autonomous vehicles to improve spatial equity in accessibility and socio-economic developments in European urban areas

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Eppenberger ◽  
Maximilian Alexander Richter
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Unemployment Rate ◽  
Public Transport ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Well Being ◽  
District Level ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Spatial Equity ◽  
Economic Well Being

Abstract Background This paper provides insight into the opportunity offered by shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs) to improve urban populations’ spatial equity in accessibility. It provides a concrete implementation model for SAVs set to improve equity in accessibility and highlights the need of regulation in order for SAVs to help overcome identified spatial mismatches. Methodology Through the formulation of linear regression models, the relationship between land-use and transportation accessibility (by car and public transport) and socio-economic well-being indicators is tested on district-level in four European cities: Paris, Berlin, London and Vienna. Accessibility data is used to analyse access to points of interest within given timespans by both car and public transport. To measure equity in socio-economic well-being, three district-level proxies are introduced: yearly income, unemployment rate and educational attainment. Results In the cities of Paris, London and Vienna, as well as partially in Berlin, positive effects of educational attainment on accessibility are evidenced. Further, positive effects on accessibility by yearly income are found in Paris and London. Additionally, negative effects of an increased unemployment rate on accessibility are observed in Paris and Vienna. Through the comparison between accessibility by car and public transportation in the districts of the four cities, the potential for SAVs is evidenced. Lastly, on the basis of the findings a ‘SAV identification matrix’ is created, visualizing the underserved districts in each of the four cities and the need of equity enhancing policy for the introduction of SAVs is emphasized.

Female Voice Agents in Fully Autonomous Vehicles Are Not Only More Likeable and Comfortable, But Also More Competent

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 1033-1037
Author(s):  
Jiayuan Dong ◽  
Emily Lawson ◽  
Jack Olsen ◽  
Myounghoon Jeon
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Driving ◽  
Preference Ranking ◽  
Uncanny Valley ◽  
Tracking Data ◽  
Effective Solution ◽  
User Perception ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
The Voice

Driving agents can provide an effective solution to improve drivers’ trust in and to manage interactions with autonomous vehicles. Research has focused on voice-agents, while few have explored robot-agents or the comparison between the two. The present study tested two variables - voice gender and agent embodiment, using conversational scripts. Twenty participants experienced autonomous driving using the simulator for four agent conditions and filled out subjective questionnaires for their perception of each agent. Results showed that the participants perceived the voice only female agent as more likeable, more comfortable, and more competent than other conditions. Their final preference ranking also favored this agent over the others. Interestingly, eye-tracking data showed that embodied agents did not add more visual distractions than the voice only agents. The results are discussed with the traditional gender stereotype, uncanny valley, and participants’ gender. This study can contribute to the design of in-vehicle agents in the autonomous vehicles and future studies are planned to further identify the underlying mechanisms of user perception on different agents.

Pricing of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles in Mixed-Traffic Networks

2021 ◽  
pp. 036119812098585
Author(s):  
Paolo Delle Site
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Marginal Cost ◽  
User Behavior ◽  
Social Planner ◽  
Traffic Networks ◽  
Mixed Traffic ◽  
The Third ◽  
First Case ◽  
Marginal Cost Pricing ◽  
The Social

For networks with human-driven vehicles (HDVs) only, pricing with arc-specific tolls has been proposed to achieve minimization of travel times in a decentralized way. However, the policy is hardly feasible from a technical viewpoint without connectivity. Therefore, for networks with mixed traffic of HDVs and connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), this paper considers pricing in a scenario where only CAVs are charged. In contrast to HDVs, CAVs can be managed as individual vehicles or as a fleet. In the latter case, CAVs can be routed to minimize the travel time of the fleet of CAVs or that of the entire fleet of HDVs and CAVs. We have a selfish user behavior in the first case, a private monopolist behavior in the second, a social planner behavior in the third. Pricing achieves in a decentralized way the social planner optimum. Tolls are not unique and can take both positive and negative values. Marginal cost pricing is one solution. The valid toll set is provided, and tolls are then computed according to two schemes: one with positive tolls only and minimum toll expenditure, and one with both tolls and subsidies and zero net expenditure. Convergent algorithms are used for the mixed-behavior equilibrium (simplicial decomposition algorithm) and toll determination (cutting plane algorithm). The computational experience with three networks: a two-arc network representative of the classic town bypass case, the Nguyen-Dupuis network, and the Anaheim network, provides useful policy insight.

scholarly journals Collaborative Autonomous Driving—A Survey of Solution Approaches and Future Challenges

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (11) ◽  
pp. 3783
Author(s):  
Sumbal Malik ◽  
Manzoor Ahmed Khan ◽  
Hesham El-Sayed
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Autonomous Driving ◽  
Use Cases ◽  
Cooperative Driving ◽  
Vehicle To Vehicle ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
Vehicle To Infrastructure ◽  
High Level ◽  
Intersection Management

Sooner than expected, roads will be populated with a plethora of connected and autonomous vehicles serving diverse mobility needs. Rather than being stand-alone, vehicles will be required to cooperate and coordinate with each other, referred to as cooperative driving executing the mobility tasks properly. Cooperative driving leverages Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communication technologies aiming to carry out cooperative functionalities: (i) cooperative sensing and (ii) cooperative maneuvering. To better equip the readers with background knowledge on the topic, we firstly provide the detailed taxonomy section describing the underlying concepts and various aspects of cooperation in cooperative driving. In this survey, we review the current solution approaches in cooperation for autonomous vehicles, based on various cooperative driving applications, i.e., smart car parking, lane change and merge, intersection management, and platooning. The role and functionality of such cooperation become more crucial in platooning use-cases, which is why we also focus on providing more details of platooning use-cases and focus on one of the challenges, electing a leader in high-level platooning. Following, we highlight a crucial range of research gaps and open challenges that need to be addressed before cooperative autonomous vehicles hit the roads. We believe that this survey will assist the researchers in better understanding vehicular cooperation, its various scenarios, solution approaches, and challenges.

The Impact of Mental States on Semi-autonomous Driving Takeover Performance: A Systematic Review

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 1372-1376
Author(s):  
Gaojian Huang ◽  
Christine Petersen ◽  
Brandon J. Pitts
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Autonomous Driving ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Manual Control ◽  
Monitoring Systems ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Impact

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.

scholarly journals Effects Of Student Life On SARS-Cov-2 Prevention At University

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Moska Sial ◽  
Manavi Purohit ◽  
Matan Bone
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Student Life ◽  
Multifaceted Approach ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
Letter To The Editor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Side ◽  
Academic Year

Abstract The coronavirus 2019 (SARS-Cov-2) pandemic has proven to be a disaster in need of controlling. The disease has taken its toll on universities; as a consequence, universities must prepare their campuses in such a way that will reduce SARS-Cov-2 cases and ensure the safety of their students. This is why it is necessary to critically assess the risks involved in reopening university campuses. This letter to the editor highlights the importance of the social side of student life on campus, and how it might affect the precautions put in place to reduce SARS-Cov-2 transmission. Furthermore, this letter is proposing potential courses of action for universities to take during the pandemic, this forthcoming academic year. The ability of universities to contain the spread of the virus is limited, as they lack control over social interactions outside of campus. We discuss the multifaceted approach needed to educate students about off-campus transmission allowing the prevention of SARS-Cov-2 transmission.

scholarly journals Ethical dilemmas are really important to potential adopters of autonomous vehicles

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tripat Gill
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Social Dilemma ◽  
Innovation Adoption ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Early Adopters ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal And Ethical Issues ◽  
Theoretical Standpoint

AbstractThe ethical dilemma (ED) of whether autonomous vehicles (AVs) should protect the passengers or pedestrians when harm is unavoidable has been widely researched and debated. Several behavioral scientists have sought public opinion on this issue, based on the premise that EDs are critical to resolve for AV adoption. However, many scholars and industry participants have downplayed the importance of these edge cases. Policy makers also advocate a focus on higher level ethical principles rather than on a specific solution to EDs. But conspicuously absent from this debate is the view of the consumers or potential adopters, who will be instrumental to the success of AVs. The current research investigated this issue both from a theoretical standpoint and through empirical research. The literature on innovation adoption and risk perception suggests that EDs will be heavily weighted by potential adopters of AVs. Two studies conducted with a broad sample of consumers verified this assertion. The results from these studies showed that people associated EDs with the highest risk and considered EDs as the most important issue to address as compared to the other technical, legal and ethical issues facing AVs. As such, EDs need to be addressed to ensure robustness in the design of AVs and to assure consumers of the safety of this promising technology. Some preliminary evidence is provided about interventions to resolve the social dilemma in EDs and about the ethical preferences of prospective early adopters of AVs.

scholarly journals A Set of Single YOLO Modalities to Detect Occluded Entities via Viewpoint Conversion

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (13) ◽  
pp. 6016
Author(s):  
Jinsoo Kim ◽  
Jeongho Cho
Keyword(s):  
Object Detection ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Driving ◽  
Detection Algorithm ◽  
Detection Accuracy ◽  
Cloud Data ◽  
Detection Techniques ◽  
Bounding Boxes ◽  
Partially Occluded ◽  
Rgb Image

For autonomous vehicles, it is critical to be aware of the driving environment to avoid collisions and drive safely. The recent evolution of convolutional neural networks has contributed significantly to accelerating the development of object detection techniques that enable autonomous vehicles to handle rapid changes in various driving environments. However, collisions in an autonomous driving environment can still occur due to undetected obstacles and various perception problems, particularly occlusion. Thus, we propose a robust object detection algorithm for environments in which objects are truncated or occluded by employing RGB image and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) bird’s eye view (BEV) representations. This structure combines independent detection results obtained in parallel through “you only look once” networks using an RGB image and a height map converted from the BEV representations of LiDAR’s point cloud data (PCD). The region proposal of an object is determined via non-maximum suppression, which suppresses the bounding boxes of adjacent regions. A performance evaluation of the proposed scheme was performed using the KITTI vision benchmark suite dataset. The results demonstrate the detection accuracy in the case of integration of PCD BEV representations is superior to when only an RGB camera is used. In addition, robustness is improved by significantly enhancing detection accuracy even when the target objects are partially occluded when viewed from the front, which demonstrates that the proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional RGB-based model.

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