scholarly journals Autonomous Vehicles: A Future Fast Approaching With No One Behind the Wheel

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Bollman

Driverless automobiles may redefine public safety and efficiency, while turning the automobile industry on its head. These innovative machines will pose a challenge to regulatory schemes spanning from transportation and insurance to products liability and internet laws. Enormous companies like BMW, Audi, Uber, and Google have already taken part in placing this rapidly growing technology into consumer hands. The rift that this innovation will create in other industries, coupled with the safety and privacy concerns surrounding its design, will be the catalyst for contentious legislative and legal debates. This Note will explore the ways in which industry flexibility, state and federal involvement, and clearer regulations may be carefully balanced to help the driverless car industry stay on the road. Part one will address the development and historical challenges of driverless vehicles, while parts two and three will look at potential solutions to these challenges.

Author(s):  
Joseph Sekyi-Ansah ◽  
James Kwasi Quaisie ◽  
Isaac Eduyah ◽  
Mohammed Okoe Alhassan ◽  
Eric Quansah ◽  
...  

Air conditioning has become a key component in the automobile industry now, and almost every vehicle manufactured in the 21st century has air conditioning integrated. Most drivers drive with their air conditioning on while some of their windows are not fully closed; this affects the operation of the air conditioning. In addition, if the driver wants to turn on the air conditioning while driving, he or she has to move up the power windows manually after or before he or she turns on the air conditioning, which may affect his or her concentration on the road. The concept of this power window circuit system is to automatically close the windows after a few seconds when the air conditioner is turned on.


Author(s):  
Yalda Rahmati ◽  
Mohammadreza Khajeh Hosseini ◽  
Alireza Talebpour ◽  
Benjamin Swain ◽  
Christopher Nelson

Despite numerous studies on general human–robot interactions, in the context of transportation, automated vehicle (AV)–human driver interaction is not a well-studied subject. These vehicles have fundamentally different decision-making logic compared with human drivers and the driving interactions between AVs and humans can potentially change traffic flow dynamics. Accordingly, through an experimental study, this paper investigates whether there is a difference between human–human and human–AV interactions on the road. This study focuses on car-following behavior and conducted several car-following experiments utilizing Texas A&M University’s automated Chevy Bolt. Utilizing NGSIM US-101 dataset, two scenarios for a platoon of three vehicles were considered. For both scenarios, the leader of the platoon follows a series of speed profiles extracted from the NGSIM dataset. The second vehicle in the platoon can be either another human-driven vehicle (scenario A) or an AV (scenario B). Data is collected from the third vehicle in the platoon to characterize the changes in driving behavior when following an AV. A data-driven and a model-based approach were used to identify possible changes in driving behavior from scenario A to scenario B. The findings suggested there is a statistically significant difference between human drivers’ behavior in these two scenarios and human drivers felt more comfortable following the AV. Simulation results also revealed the importance of capturing these changes in human behavior in microscopic simulation models of mixed driving environments.


2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 660-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Udara Eshan Manawadu ◽  
◽  
Masaaki Ishikawa ◽  
Mitsuhiro Kamezaki ◽  
Shigeki Sugano ◽  
...  

<div class=""abs_img""><img src=""[disp_template_path]/JRM/abst-image/00270006/08.jpg"" width=""300"" /> Driving simulator</div>Intelligent passenger vehicles with autonomous capabilities will be commonplace on our roads in the near future. These vehicles will reshape the existing relationship between the driver and vehicle. Therefore, to create a new type of rewarding relationship, it is important to analyze when drivers prefer autonomous vehicles to manually-driven (conventional) vehicles. This paper documents a driving simulator-based study conducted to identify the preferences and individual driving experiences of novice and experienced drivers of autonomous and conventional vehicles under different traffic and road conditions. We first developed a simplified driving simulator that could connect to different driver-vehicle interfaces (DVI). We then created virtual environments consisting of scenarios and events that drivers encounter in real-world driving, and we implemented fully autonomous driving. We then conducted experiments to clarify how the autonomous driving experience differed for the two groups. The results showed that experienced drivers opt for conventional driving overall, mainly due to the flexibility and driving pleasure it offers, while novices tend to prefer autonomous driving due to its inherent ease and safety. A further analysis indicated that drivers preferred to use both autonomous and conventional driving methods interchangeably, depending on the road and traffic conditions.


Author(s):  
Yiqi Gao ◽  
Theresa Lin ◽  
Francesco Borrelli ◽  
Eric Tseng ◽  
Davor Hrovat

Two frameworks based on Model Predictive Control (MPC) for obstacle avoidance with autonomous vehicles are presented. A given trajectory represents the driver intent. An MPC has to safely avoid obstacles on the road while trying to track the desired trajectory by controlling front steering angle and differential braking. We present two different approaches to this problem. The first approach solves a single nonlinear MPC problem. The second approach uses a hierarchical scheme. At the high-level, a trajectory is computed on-line, in a receding horizon fashion, based on a simplified point-mass vehicle model in order to avoid an obstacle. At the low-level an MPC controller computes the vehicle inputs in order to best follow the high level trajectory based on a nonlinear vehicle model. This article presents the design and comparison of both approaches, the method for implementing them, and successful experimental results on icy roads.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 7984
Author(s):  
Prabu Subramani ◽  
Khalid Nazim Abdul Sattar ◽  
Rocío Pérez de Prado ◽  
Balasubramanian Girirajan ◽  
Marcin Wozniak

Connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) currently promise cooperation between vehicles, providing abundant and real-time information through wireless communication technologies. In this paper, a two-level fusion of classifiers (TLFC) approach is proposed by using deep learning classifiers to perform accurate road detection (RD). The proposed TLFC-RD approach improves the classification by considering four key strategies such as cross fold operation at input and pre-processing using superpixel generation, adequate features, multi-classifier feature fusion and a deep learning classifier. Specifically, the road is classified as drivable and non-drivable areas by designing the TLFC using the deep learning classifiers, and the detected information using the TLFC-RD is exchanged between the autonomous vehicles for the ease of driving on the road. The TLFC-RD is analyzed in terms of its accuracy, sensitivity or recall, specificity, precision, F1-measure and max F measure. The TLFC- RD method is also evaluated compared to three existing methods: U-Net with the Domain Adaptation Model (DAM), Two-Scale Fully Convolutional Network (TFCN) and a cooperative machine learning approach (i.e., TAAUWN). Experimental results show that the accuracy of the TLFC-RD method for the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Toyota Technological Institute (KITTI) dataset is 99.12% higher than its competitors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-191
Author(s):  
Sarah Stutts ◽  
Kenneth Saintonge ◽  
Nicholas Jordan ◽  
Christina Wasson

Roadways are sociocultural spaces constructed for human travel which embody intersections of technology, transportation, and culture. In order to navigate these spaces successfully, autonomous vehicles must be able to respond to the needs and practices of those who use the road. We conducted research on how cyclists, solid waste truck drivers, and crossing guards experience the driving behaviors of other road users, to inform the development of autonomous vehicles. We found that the roadways were contested spaces, with each road user group enacting their own social constructions of the road. Furthermore, the three groups we worked with all felt marginalized by comparison with car drivers, who were ideologically and often physically dominant on the road. This article is based on research for the Nissan Research Center - Silicon Valley, which took place as part of a Design Anthropology course at the University of North Texas.


Author(s):  
Simon Roberts

The CoDRIVE solution builds on R&amp;amp;D in the development of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs). The mainstay of the system is a low-cost GNSS receiver integrated with a MEMS grade IMU powered with CoDRIVE algorithms and high precision data processing software. The solution integrates RFID (radio-frequency identification) localisation information derived from tags installed in the roads around the University of Nottingham. This aids the positioning solution by correcting the long-term drift of inertial navigation technology in the absence of GNSS. The solution is informed of obscuration of GNSS through city models of skyview and elevation masks derived from 360-degree photography. The results show that predictive intelligence of the denial of GNSS and RFID aiding realises significant benefits compared to the inertial only solution. According to the validation, inertial only solutions drift over time, with an overall RMS accuracy over a 300 metres section of GNSS outage of 10 to 20 metres. After deploying the RFID tags on the road, experiments show that the RFID aided algorithm is able to constrain the maximum error to within 3.76 metres, and with 93.9% of points constrained to 2 metres accuracy overall.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naroa Coretti Sanchez ◽  
Juan Múgica Gonzalez ◽  
Luis Alonso Pastor ◽  
Kent Larson

The current trends towards vehicle-sharing, electrification, and autonomy are predicted to transform mobility. Combined appropriately, they have the potential of significantly improving urban mobility. However, what will come after most vehicles are shared, electric, and autonomous remains an open question, especially regarding the interactions between vehicles and how these interactions will impact system-level behaviour. Inspired by nature and supported by swarm robotics and vehicle platooning models, this paper proposes a future mobility in which shared, electric, and autonomous vehicles behave as a bio-inspired collaborative system. The collaboration between vehicles will lead to a system-level behaviour analogous to natural swarms. Natural swarms can divide tasks, cluster, build together, or transport cooperatively. In this future mobility, vehicles will cluster by connecting either physically or virtually, which will enable the possibility of sharing energy, data or computational power, provide services or transfer cargo, among others. Vehicles will collaborate either with vehicles that are part of the same fleet, or with any other vehicle on the road, by finding mutualistic relationships that benefit both parties. The field of swarm robotics has already translated some of the behaviours from natural swarms to artificial systems and, if we further translate these concepts into urban mobility, exciting ideas emerge. Within mobility-related research, the coordinated movement proposed in vehicle platooning models can be seen as a first step towards collaborative mobility. This paper contributes with the proposal of a framework for future mobility that integrates current research and mobility trends in a novel and unique way.


Author(s):  
M. L. R. Lagahit ◽  
Y. H. Tseng

Abstract. The concept of Autonomous Vehicles (AV) or self-driving cars has been increasingly popular these past few years. As such, research and development of AVs have also escalated around the world. One of those researches is about High-Definition (HD) maps. HD Maps are basically very detailed maps that provide all the geometric and semantic information on the road, which helps the AV in positioning itself on the lanes as well as mapping objects and markings on the road. This research will focus on the early stages of updating said HD maps. The methodology mainly consists of (1) running YOLOv3, a real-time object detection system, on a photo taken from a stereo camera to detect the object of interest, in this case a traffic cone, (2) applying the theories of stereo-photogrammetry to determine the 3D coordinates of the traffic cone, and (3) executing all of it at the same time on a Python-based platform. Results have shown centimeter-level accuracy in terms of obtained distance and height of the detected traffic cone from the camera setup. In future works, observed coordinates can be uploaded to a database and then connected to an application for real-time data storage/management and interactive visualization.


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