自主车辆安全系数估计与T形路口避碰规划

针对自主车辆T形路口协作问题,通过测量车辆速度和预碰点距离,提出安全系数估计方法,结合人工势场基本思想,实现车辆路口避碰,提高路口协作效率.首先以计算得到的安全系数为依据,评价驶入T形路口两辆自主车各自的安全程度,并利用人工势场产生的推拉作用估计协作自主车辆的期望控制力和速度.然后将估计的期望车速与反馈的实际车速形成偏差,利用增量型数字PI控制器实现自主车纵向车速的准确控制.最后以一定的策略完成两辆自主车的并线协作.仿真结果验证了基于安全系数估计的自主车辆T形路口协作避碰的可行性与有效性.     

Effectiveness and driver acceptance of a semi-autonomous forward obstacle collision avoidance system

This paper proposes a semi-autonomous collision avoidance system for the prevention of collisions between vehicles and pedestrians and objects on a road. The system is designed to be compatible with the human-centered automation principle, i.e., the decision to perform a maneuver to avoid a collision is made by the driver. However, the system is partly autonomous in that it turns the steering wheel independently when the driver only applies the brake, indicating his or her intent to avoid the obstacle. With a medium-fidelity driving simulator, we conducted an experiment to investigate the effectiveness of this system for improving safety in emergency situations, as well as its acceptance by drivers. The results indicate that the system effectively improves safety in emergency situations, and the semi-autonomous characteristic of the system was found to be acceptable to drivers.     

基于DBN的特种车辆前向防撞推理模型

针对特种车辆在动态环境中的前向碰撞风险评估问题,对特种车辆前向碰撞风险的自然因素、驾驶员行为特征等进行研究,并对固定的车辆安全防撞距离阈值进行改进,提出了一种基于动态贝叶斯网络的前向防撞推理模型。该模型将自车与周围环境的位置关系、环境关系、驾驶员行为等因素进行融合,一旦周围环境发生变化,该模型可以及时评估前向风险,并与静态贝叶斯网络的前向推理模型进行对比分析。仿真实验验证了该前向防撞推理模型的可行性和有效性。     

Motion planning of autonomous vehicles in a non-autonomous vehicle environment without speed lanes

Planning is one of the key problems for autonomous vehicles operating in road scenarios. Present planning algorithms operate with the assumption that traffic is organised in predefined speed lanes, which makes it impossible to allow autonomous vehicles in countries with unorganised traffic. Unorganised traffic is though capable of higher traffic bandwidths when constituting vehicles vary in their speed capabilities and sizes. Diverse vehicles in an unorganised exhibit unique driving behaviours which are analysed in this paper by a simulation study. The aim of the work reported here is to create a planning algorithm for mixed traffic consisting of both autonomous and non-autonomous vehicles without any inter-vehicle communication. The awareness (e.g. vision) of every vehicle is restricted to nearby vehicles only and a straight infinite road is assumed for decision making regarding navigation in the presence of multiple vehicles. Exhibited behaviours include obstacle avoidance, overtaking, giving way for vehicles to overtake from behind, vehicle following, adjusting the lateral lane position and so on. A conflict of plans is a major issue which will almost certainly arise in the absence of inter-vehicle communication. Hence each vehicle needs to continuously track other vehicles and rectify plans whenever a collision seems likely. Further it is observed here that driver aggression plays a vital role in overall traffic dynamics, hence this has also been factored in accordingly. This work is hence a step forward towards achieving autonomous vehicles in unorganised traffic, while similar effort would be required for planning problems such as intersections, mergers, diversions and other modules like localisation.     

General fight rule-based trajectory planning for pairwise collision avoidance in a known environment

This paper presents a general flight rule-based autonomous trajectory planning scheme for two aerial vehicles to avoid obstacles and collisions in known environments in low-altitude airspace for general aviation. Flight rules in low-altitude airspace are first introduced based on the general flight rules in US, UK and China, and then the suitable flight rules are embedded into the trajectory planning algorithm. It is supposed that the flight parameters, such as positions and velocities, are all available to the aerial vehicles involved in the possible conflict. Then the trajectory of each aerial vehicle is calculated by optimizing an objective function, such as distance and fuel consumption, with the constraints corresponding to the airspace traffic rules. The optimization problem is solved by receding horizon control (RHC) based mixed integer linear programming (MILP). Compared with other collision avoidance algorithms, the proposed algorithm can be adapted to plan the autonomous trajectory to avoid pairwise collision and obstacles as proposed general flight rules. Simulations show the feasibility of the proposed scheme.     

A framework and automotive application of collision avoidance decision making

Collision avoidance (CA) systems are applicable for most transportation systems ranging from autonomous robots and vehicles to aircraft, cars and ships. A probabilistic framework is presented for designing and analyzing existing CA algorithms proposed in literature, enabling on-line computation of the risk for faulty intervention and consequence of different actions. The approach is based on Monte Carlo techniques, where sampling-resampling methods are used to convert sensor readings with stochastic errors to a Bayesian risk. The concepts are evaluated using a real-time implementation of an automotive collision mitigation system, and results from one demonstrator vehicle are presented.     

Autonomous collision detection and avoidance for ARAGON USV: Development and field tests

This study addresses the development of algorithms for multiple target detection and tracking in the framework of sensor fusion and its application to autonomous navigation and collision avoidance systems for the unmanned surface vehicle (USV) Aragon. To provide autonomous navigation capabilities, various perception sensors such as radar, lidar, and cameras have been mounted on the USV platform and automatic ship detection algorithms are applied to the sensor measurements. The relative position information between the USV and nearby objects is obtained to estimate the motion of the target objects in a sensor‐level tracking filter. The estimated motion information from the individual tracking filters is then combined in a central‐level fusion tracker to achieve persistent and reliable target tracking performance. For automatic ship collision avoidance, the combined track data are used as obstacle information, and appropriate collision avoidance maneuvers are designed and executed in accordance with the international regulations for preventing collisions at sea (COLREGs). In this paper, the development processes of the vehicle platform and the autonomous navigation algorithms are described, and the results of field experiments are presented and discussed.     

A digital-driving system for smart vehicles

In the wake of the computer and information technology revolutions, vehicles are undergoing dramatic changes in their capabilities and how they interact with drivers. Although some vehicles can decide to either generate warnings for the human driver or control the vehicle autonomously, they must usually make these decisions in real time with only incomplete information. So, human drivers must still maintain control over the vehicle. I sketch a digital driving behavior model. By simulating and analyzing driver behavior during different maneuvers such as lane changing, lane following, and traffic avoidance, researchers participating in the Beijing Institute of Technology's digital-driving project will be able to examine the possible correlations or causal relations between the smart vehicle, IVISs, the intelligent road-traffic-information network, and the driver. We aim to successfully demonstrate that a digital-driving system can provide a direction for developing human-centered smart vehicles.     

Finite-time consensus and collision avoidance control algorithms for multiple AUVs

In this paper, finite-time position consensus and collision avoidance problems are investigated for multi-AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) systems. First, based on the homogeneous control method, finite-time position consensus algorithms are proposed for both leaderless and leader–follower multi-AUV systems without considering collisions between the AUVs. Specifically, in the leader–follower case, a novel distributed finite-time observer is developed for the followers to estimate the leader’s velocity. Second, by constructing collision avoidance and connectivity maintenance functions, modified consensus algorithms containing corresponding gradient terms are presented for multi-AUV systems of both cases, which guarantee collision avoidance, connectivity maintenance, velocity matching, and consensus boundedness. Simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithms.     

基于学习分类器的自主地面车在狭隘环境中的路径规划

提出了一种基于学习分类器(LCS)的避碰路径规划方法,设计了集成适应度函数,在确保安全避碰的前提下,解决自主地面车(ALV)在狭隘环境下的路径优化问题.不同环境的仿真实验结果表明,遗传算法和学习分类器结合用于自主地面车的路径规划是收敛的,提高了ALV在狭隘环境中快速发现安全路径的能力.     

Perception,information processing and modeling: Critical stages for autonomous driving applications

Over the last decades, the development of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) has become a critical endeavor to attain different objectives: safety enhancement, mobility improvement, energy optimization and comfort. In order to tackle the first three objectives, a considerable amount of research focusing on autonomous driving have been carried out. Most of these works have been conducted within collaborative research programs involving car manufacturers, OEM and research laboratories around the world. Recent research and development on highly autonomous driving aim to ultimately replace the driver's actions with robotic functions. The first successful steps were dedicated to embedded assistance systems such as speed regulation (ACC), obstacle collision avoidance or mitigation (Automatic Emergency Braking), vehicle stability control (ESC), lane keeping or lane departure avoidance. Partially automated driving will require co-pilot applications (which replace the driver on his all driving tasks) involving a combination of the above methods, algorithms and architectures. Such a system is built with complex, distributed and cooperative architectures requiring strong properties such as reliability and robustness. Such properties must be maintained despite complex and degraded working conditions including adverse weather conditions, fog or dust as perceived by sensors. This paper is an overview on reliability and robustness issues related to sensors processing and perception. Indeed, prior to ensuring a high level of safety in the deployment of autonomous driving applications, it is necessary to guarantee a very high level of quality for the perception mechanisms. Therefore, we will detail these critical perception stages and provide a presentation of usable embedded sensors. Furthermore, in this study of state of the art of recent highly automated systems, some remarks and comments about limits of these systems and potential future research ways will be provided. Moreover, we will also give some advice on how to design a co-pilot application with driver modeling. Finally, we discuss a global architecture for the next generation of co-pilot applications. This architecture is based on the use of recent methods and technologies (AI, Quantify self, IoT …) and takes into account the human factors and driver modeling.     

Fuzzy-Logic Based Navigation of Underwater Vehicles

A fuzzy logic based general purpose modular control architecture is presented for underwater vehicle autonomous navigation, control and collision avoidance. Three levels of fuzzy controllers comprising the sensor fusion module, the collision avoidance module and the motion control module are derived and implemented. No assumption is made on the specific underwater vehicle type, on the amount of a priori knowledge of the 3-D undersea environment or on static and dynamic obstacle size and velocity. The derived controllers account for vehicle position accuracy and vertical stability in the presence of ocean currents and constraints imposed by the roll motion. The main advantage of the proposed navigation control architecture is its simplicity, modularity, expandability and applicability to any type of autonomous or semi-autonomous underwater vehicles. Extensive simulation studies are performed on the NPS Phoenix vehicle whose dynamics have been modified to account for roll stability.     

Collision avoidance command governor for multi‐vehicle unmanned systems

In this paper, we consider the problem of coordinating a collection of autonomous unmanned vehicles while guaranteeing collision avoidance. Each vehicle is regulated by a local controller that ensures stability and provides desired path tracking performance in the absence of constraints. The fulfillment of coordination tasks (e.g., collision avoidance) and local constraints (e.g., input saturation constraints) is achieved through a command governor (CG) strategy that, whenever necessary, modifies the nominal paths of the vehicles. First, a centralized CG approach is proposed and fully analyzed. Then, a more interesting distributed implementation requiring low communication rates is discussed. Both approaches make use of a receding horizon strategy and require the on‐line solution of mixed‐integer optimization programs. Finally, an example is given for illustration purposes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Continuous Airborne Communication Relay Approach Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

As a result of unmanned aerial vehicles being widely used in different areas, studies about increasing the autonomous capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles are gaining momentum. Today, unmanned aerial vehicle platforms are especially used in reconnaissance, surveillance and communications areas. In this study, in order to achieve continuous long-range communication relay infrastructure, artificial potential field based path planning of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is discussed. A novel dynamic approach to relay-chain concept is proposed to maintain the communication between vehicles. Besides dynamically keeping vehicles in range and appropriate position to maintain communication relay, artificial potential field based path planning also provides collision avoidance system. The performance of the proposed system is measured by applying a simulation under the Matlab Simulink and Network Simulator environment. Artificial potential field based flight patterns are generated in Matlab, and performance of the communication between vehicles is measured in Network Simulation environment. Finally the simulation results show that an airborne communication relay can be established autonomously by using artificial potential filed based autonomous path planning approach. Continues state communication is provided by obtaining a resistant communication relay which depends on artificial potential field based positioning algorithm.     

Simulation and Field Testing of Multiple Vehicles Collision Avoidance Algorithms

A global planning algorithm for intelligent vehicles is designed based on the A* algorithm, which provides intelligent vehicles with a global path towards their destinations. A distributed real-time multiple vehicle collision avoidance (MVCA) algorithm is proposed by extending the reciprocal ${ n}$-body collision avoidance method. MVCA enables the intelligent vehicles to choose their destinations and control inputs independently, without needing to negotiate with each other or with the coordinator. Compared to the centralized trajectory-planning algorithm, MVCA reduces computation costs and greatly improves the robustness of the system. Because the destination of each intelligent vehicle can be regarded as private, which can be protected by MVCA, at the same time MVCA can provide a real-time trajectory planning for intelligent vehicles. Therefore, MVCA can better improve the safety of intelligent vehicles. The simulation was conducted in MATLAB, including crossroads scene simulation and circular exchange position simulation. The results show that MVCA behaves safely and reliably. The effects of latency and packet loss on MVCA are also statistically investigated through theoretically formulating broadcasting process based on one-dimensional Markov chain. The results uncover that the tolerant delay should not exceed the half of deciding cycle of trajectory planning, and shortening the sending interval could alleviate the negative effects caused by the packet loss to an extent. The cases of short delay (${ < 100}$ ms) and low packet loss (${ < 5\%}$) can bring little influence to those trajectory planning algorithms that only depend on V2V to sense the context, but the unpredictable collision may occur if the delay and packet loss are further worsened. The MVCA was also tested by a real intelligent vehicle, the test results prove the operability of MVCA.      

Rough Terrain Autonomous Mobility—Part 2: An Active Vision, Predictive Control Approach

Off-road autonomous navigation is one of the most difficult automation challenges from the point of view of constraints on mobility, speed of motion, lack of environmental structure, density of hazards, and typical lack of prior information. This paper describes an autonomous navigation software system for outdoor vehicles which includes perception, mapping, obstacle detection and avoidance, and goal seeking. It has been used on several vehicle testbeds including autonomous HMMWV's and planetary rover prototypes. To date, it has achieved speeds of 15 km/hr and excursions of 15 km.We introduce algorithms for optimal processing and computational stabilization of range imagery for terrain mapping purposes. We formulate the problem of trajectory generation as one of predictive control searching trajectories expressed in command space. We also formulate the problem of goal arbitration in local autonomous mobility as an optimal control problem. We emphasize the modeling of vehicles in state space form. The resulting high fidelity models stabilize coordinated control of a high speed vehicle for both obstacle avoidance and goal seeking purposes. An intermediate predictive control layer is introduced between the typical high-level strategic or artificial intelligence layer and the typical low-level servo control layer. This layer incorporates some deliberation, and some environmental mapping as do deliberative AI planners, yet it also emphasizes the real-time aspects of the problem as do minimalist reactive architectures.     

An efficient and flexible approach for multiple vehicle tracking in the aerial video sequence

ABSTRACT

Multiple vehicle tracking (MVT) in the aerial video sequence can provide useful information for the applications such as traffic flow analysis. It is challenging due to the high requirement for the tracking efficiency and variable number of the vehicles. Furthermore, it is particularly challenging if the vehicles are occluded by the shadow of the trees, buildings, and large vehicles. In this article, an efficient and flexible MVT approach in the aerial video sequence is put forward. First, as the pre-step to approach the MVT problem, the superpixel segmentation-based multiple vehicle detection (MVD) is achieved by combining the two-frame difference and superpixel segmentation. The two-frame difference is utilized to reduce the search space. By scanning the search space via the centre of the superpixels, the moving vehicles are detected efficiently. Then, the deterministic data association is proposed to tackle the MVT problem. To improve the tracking accuracy, we fuse multiple types of features to establish the cost function. With respect to the variable number of the vehicles, the tracker management is designed by establishing or deleting the trackers. Furthermore, for the occlusion handling, we focus on the accurate state estimation, and it is realized by the driver behaviour-based Kalman filter (DBKF) method. In the DBKF method, we take seriously into account the driver behaviour, including the speed limit and rear-end collision avoidance with the front vehicle. Both tracker management and occlusion handling make the MVT approach flexibly cope with varieties of traffic scenes. Finally, comprehensive experiments on the DARPA VIVID data set and KIT AIS data set demonstrate that the proposed MVT algorithm can generate satisfactory and superior results.     

基于PSO-IGA算法的高性能十字阵列的设计与综合

前碰撞预警系统是安全辅助驾驶领域的一项重要部分,通过计算机处理交通环境信息,当检测到潜在危险时,及时提醒并辅助驾驶员。采用计算机视觉方法,通过目标检测和跟踪算法,获取图像中目标车辆的位置和轨迹信息,并利用相机标定,计算当前车辆和前方车辆在世界坐标系中的距离、速度及轨迹等信息,综合该信息,实现前车碰撞时间预警、前车并线预警以及非机动车预警算法。在前车并线过程中,利用轨迹信息实时检测前车并线意图,及时提示驾驶员注意避让前方车辆。实验表明,本文提出的预警算法具有较高的准确性和鲁棒性,特别在高架或高速道路场景下,并线预警算法能检测到前车的并线意图,及时预警。     

A Survey and Tutorial of EEG-Based Brain Monitoring for Driver State Analysis

The driver’s cognitive and physiological states affect his/her ability to control the vehicle. Thus, these driver states are essential to the safety of automobiles. The design of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) or autonomous vehicles will depend on their ability to interact effectively with the driver. A deeper understanding of the driver state is, therefore, paramount. Electroencephalography (EEG) is proven to be one of the most effective methods for driver state monitoring and human error detection. This paper discusses EEG-based driver state detection systems and their corresponding analysis algorithms over the last three decades. First, the commonly used EEG system setup for driver state studies is introduced. Then, the EEG signal preprocessing, feature extraction, and classification algorithms for driver state detection are reviewed. Finally, EEG-based driver state monitoring research is reviewed in-depth, and its future development is discussed. It is concluded that the current EEG-based driver state monitoring algorithms are promising for safety applications. However, many improvements are still required in EEG artifact reduction, real-time processing, and between-subject classification accuracy.