Browse Topic: Pedestrian safety

Items (259)
Autonomous vehicle technologies have become increasingly popular over the last few years. One of their most important application is autonomous shuttle buses that could radically change public transport systems. In order to enhance the availability of shuttle service, this article outlines a series of interconnected challenges and innovative solutions to optimize the operation of autonomous shuttles based on the experience within the Shuttle Modellregion Oberfranken (SMO) project. The shuttle shall be able to work in every weather condition, including the robustness of the perception algorithm. Besides, the shuttle shall react to environmental changes, interact with other traffic participants, and ensure comfortable travel for passengers and awareness of VRUs. These challenging situations shall be solved alone or with a teleoperator’s help. Our analysis considers the basic sense–plan–act architecture for autonomous driving. Critical components like object detection, pedestrian tracking
Dehghani, AliSalaar, HamzaSrinivasan, Shanmuga PriyaZhou, LixianArbeiter, GeorgLindner, AlisaPatino-Studencki, Lucila
US transportation infrastructure is dominated by the automobile form factor. Alternative modalities of movement, such as bikes, golf carts, and other micromobility options, have existed but are decidedly at a lower tier of importance. Even pedestrian access ways are not overly emphasized in the US transportation system. This lack of prioritization matches the reality that the vast majority of people and commerce moves through the motor vehicle infrastructure, with micromobility sitting in the periphery. Additionally, given the current lack of commercial applications, there are limited direct fee-based funding mechanisms connected to micromobility form factors. Micromobility and the Next Infrastructure Wave discusses how recent technological innovations in electrification, e-commerce, and autonomy are enabling a new class of micromobility devices which offer palpable value to consumers and enable significant commercial applications. Unlike the past, these micromobility devices now have
Razdan, Rahul
India is a diverse country in terms of road conditions, road maintenance, traffic conditions, traffic density, quality of traffic which implies presence of agricultural tractors, bullock carts, autos, motor bikes, oncoming traffic in same lane, vulnerable road users (VRU) walking in the same lanes as vehicles, VRU’s crossing roads without using zebra crossings etc. as additional traffic quality deterrents in comparison to developed countries. The braking capacity of such vivid road users may not be at par with global standards due to their maintenance, loading beyond specifications, driver behavior which includes the tendency to maintain a close gap between the preceding vehicle etc. which may lead to incidents specifically of rear collisions due to the front vehicle going through an emergency braking event. The following paper provides a comprehensive study of the special considerations or intricacies in implementation of Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEBS) feature into Indian traffic
Kartheek, NedunuriKhare, RashmitaSathyamurthy, SainathanManickam, PraveenkumarKuchipudi, Venkata Sai Pavan
This study aims to elucidate the impact of A-pillar blind spots on drivers’ visibility of pedestrians during left and right turns at an intersection. An experiment was conducted using a sedan and a truck, with a professional test driver participating. The driver was instructed to maintain sole focus on a designated pedestrian model from the moment it was first sighted during each drive. The experimental results revealed how the blind spots caused by A-pillars occur and clarified the relationship between the pedestrian visible trajectory distance and specific vehicle windows. The results indicated that the shortest trajectory distance over which a pedestrian remained visible in the sedan was 17.6 m for a far-side pedestrian model during a right turn, where visibility was exclusively through the windshield. For the truck, this distance was 20.9 m for a near-side pedestrian model during a left turn, with visibility through the windshield of 9.5 m (45.5% of 20.9 m) and through the
Matsui, YasuhiroOikawa, Shoko
Understanding driving scenes and communicating automated vehicle decisions are key requirements for trustworthy automated driving. In this article, we introduce the qualitative explainable graph (QXG), which is a unified symbolic and qualitative representation for scene understanding in urban mobility. The QXG enables interpreting an automated vehicle’s environment using sensor data and machine learning models. It utilizes spatiotemporal graphs and qualitative constraints to extract scene semantics from raw sensor inputs, such as LiDAR and camera data, offering an interpretable scene model. A QXG can be incrementally constructed in real-time, making it a versatile tool for in-vehicle explanations across various sensor types. Our research showcases the potential of QXG, particularly in the context of automated driving, where it can rationalize decisions by linking the graph with observed actions. These explanations can serve diverse purposes, from informing passengers and alerting
Belmecheri, NassimGotlieb, ArnaudLazaar, NadjibSpieker, Helge
The development of an effective Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System (AVAS) is not solely about adhering to safety regulations; it also involves crafting an auditory experience that aligns with the expectations of vulnerable road users. To achieve this, a deep understanding of the acoustic transfer function is essential, as it defines the relationship between the sound emitter (the speaker inside the vehicle) and the receiver (the vulnerable road user). Maintaining the constancy of this acoustic transfer function is paramount, as it ensures that the sound emitted by the vehicle aligns with the intended safety cues and brand identity that is defined by the car manufacturer. In this research paper, three distinct methodologies for calculating the acoustic transfer function are presented: the classical Boundary Element method, the H-Matrix BEM accelerated method, and the Ray Tracing method. Furthermore, the paper encompasses an assessment of the correlation between these methods and their
Calloni, MassimilianoHadjit, RabahSalvekar, PinakMusser, Chad
The current approach for new Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) and Connected and Automated Driving (CAD) function development involves a significant amount of public road testing which is inefficient due to the number miles that need to be driven for rare and extreme events to take place, thereby being very costly also, and unsafe as the rest of the road users become involuntary test subjects. A new development, evaluation and demonstration method for safe, efficient, and repeatable development, demonstration and evaluation of ADAS and CAD functions called Vehicle-in-Virtual –Environment (VVE) was recently introduced as a solution to this problem. The vehicle is operated in a large, empty, and flat area during VVE while its localization and perception sensor data is fed from the virtual environment with other traffic and rare and extreme events being generated as needed. The virtual environment can be easily configured and modified to construct different testing scenarios on
Cao, XinchengChen, HaochongGelbal, Sukru YarenAksun Guvenc, BilinGuvenc, Levent
Pedestrian Automatic Emergency Braking (P-AEB) is a technology designed to avoid or reduce the severity of vehicle to pedestrian collisions. This technology is currently assessed and evaluated via EuroNCAP and similar procedures in which a pedestrian test target is crossing the road, walking alongside the road, or stationary in the forward vehicle travel path. While these assessment methods serve the purpose of providing cross-comparison of technology performance in a standardized set of scenarios, there are many scenarios which could occur which are not considered or studied. By identifying and performing non-EuroNCAP, non-standardized scenarios using similar methodology, the robustness of P-AEB systems can be analyzed. These scenarios help identify areas of further development and consideration for future testing programs. Three scenarios were considered as a part of this work: straight line approach, curved path approach, and parking lot testing. Exemplar tests were performed for
Bartholomew, MeredithHelber, NicholasHeydinger, GaryZagorski, Scott
Background: The Indian automobile industry, including the auto component industry, is a significant part of the country’s economy and has experienced growth over the years. India is now the world’s 3rd largest passenger car market and the world’s second-largest two-wheeler market. Along with the boon, the bane of road accident fatalities is also a reality that needs urgent attention, as per a study titled ‘Estimation of Socio-Economic Loss due to Road Traffic Accidents in India’, the socio-economic loss due to road accidents is estimated to be around 0.55% to 1.35% of India’s GDP [27] Ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) accident data shows that the total number of fatalities on the road are the highest (in number terms) in the world. Though passenger car occupant fatalities have decreased over the years, the fatalities of vulnerable road users are showing an increasing trend. India has committed to reduce road fatalities by 50% by 2030. In this context, the automotive
Mehta, PoojaPrasad, AvinashSrivastava, AakashArora, PankajHowlader, Ashim
The active sound generation systems (ASGS) for electric vehicles (EVs) play an important role in improving sound perception and transmission in the car, and can meet the needs of different user groups for driving and riding experiences. The active sound synthesis algorithm is the core part of ASGS. This paper uses an efficient variable-range fast linear interpolation method to design a frequency-shifted and pitch-modified sound synthesis algorithm. By obtaining the operating parameters of EVs, such as vehicle speed, motor speed, pedal opening, etc., the original sound signal is interpolated to varying degrees to change the frequency of the sound signal, and then the amplitude of the sound signal is determined according to different driving states. This simulates an effect similar to the sound of a traditional car engine. Then, a dynamic superposition strategy is proposed based on the Hann window function. Through windowing and superposition processing of each sound signal segment
Yu, ShangboXie, LipingLu, ChihuaQian, YushuLiu, ZhienSongze, Du
Road accidents are a major concern worldwide and vulnerable road users make up more than half of the victims of road accident deaths. In order to combat this issue, several countries worldwide have mandated pedestrian safety test regulations viz., AIS100 & UN-R127. One of the requirements of the regulations is when Flexible Pedestrian Legform Impactor (Flex-PLI) is impacted onto the frontal structure of the vehicle at a speed of 40kmph, the Bending moment (BM) of tibia bone of Flex-PLI shall not exceed the regulatory limit of 340Nm. In this paper, we have built a statistical model for predicting the BM of tibia in Flex-PLI using regression analysis. 13 vehicles have been selected from all applicable vehicle categories viz., Sedan, hatchback, Coupe & SUV/MUV for this undertaking. An exhaustive analysis of the vehicle frontal structures and Flex-PLI test videos have been done to identify & measure the design parameters to be used as predictor variables. The vehicles have then been
Barbhuiya, Junaid HassanJain, Subhav
Objection detection using a camera sensor is essential for developing Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Autonomous Driving (AD) vehicles. Due to the recent advancement in deep Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs), object detection based on CNNs has achieved state-of-the-art performance during daytime. However, using an RGB camera alone in object detection under poor lighting conditions, such as sun flare, snow, and foggy nights, causes the system's performance to drop and increases the likelihood of a crash. In addition, the object detection system based on an RGB camera performs poorly during nighttime because the camera sensors are susceptible to lighting conditions. This paper explores different pedestrian detection systems at low-lighting conditions and proposes a sensor-fused pedestrian detection system under low-lighting conditions, including nighttime. The proposed system fuses RGB and infrared (IR) thermal camera information. IR thermal cameras are used as they are
Thota, Bharath kumarSomashekar, KarthikPark, Jungme
Analysis of pedestrian-to-vehicle collisions can be complex due to the nature of the interaction and the physics involved. The scarcity of evidence like video evidence (from CCTV or dashcams), data from the vehicle's ECU, witness accounts, and physical evidence such as tyre marks, complicates the analysis of these incidents. In cases with limited evidence, current forensic methods often rely on prolonged inquiry processes or computationally intensive simulations. Without adequate data, accurately estimating pedestrian kinematics and addressing hit-and-run scenarios becomes challenging. This research provides an alternative approach to enhancing pedestrian forensic analysis based on machine learning (ML) algorithms trained on over 3000 multi-body computer simulations with a diverse set of vehicle profiles and pedestrian anthropometries. Leveraging information such as vehicle profile, damage, and pedestrian attributes like height and weight, the ML algorithm estimates essential
Shrinivas, VadhirajBastien, ChristopheDavies, HuwDaneshkhah, AlirezaHardwicke, JosephNeal-Sturgess, CliveLamaj, Albi
Ensuring the safety of vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as pedestrians, users of micro-mobility vehicles, and cyclists is imperative for the commercialization of automated vehicles (AVs) in urban traffic scenarios. City traffic intersections are of particular concern due to the precarious situations VRUs often encounter when navigating these locations, primarily because of the unpredictable nature of urban traffic. Earlier work from the Institute of Automated Vehicles (IAM) has developed and evaluated Driving Assessment (DA) metrics for analyzing car following scenarios. In this work, we extend those evaluations to an urban traffic intersection testbed located in downtown Tempe, Arizona. A multimodal infrastructure sensor setup, comprising a high-density, 128-channel LiDAR and a 720p RGB camera, was employed to collect data during the dusk period, with the objective of capturing data during the transition from daylight to night. In this study, we present and empirically assess the
Rath, Prabin KumarHarrison, BlakeLu, DuoYang, YezhouWishart, JeffreyYu, Hongbin
Automated driving systems (ADS) are designed toward safely navigating the roadway environment, which also includes consideration of potential conflict with other road users. Of particular concern is understanding the cumulative risk associated with vulnerable road users (VRUs) conflicts and collisions. VRUs represent a population of road users that have limited protection compared to vehicle occupants. These severity distributions are particularly useful in evaluating ADS real-world performance with respect to the existing fleet of vehicles. The objective of this study was to present event severity distributions associated with vehicle-cyclist collisions within an urban naturalistic driving environment by leveraging data from third-party vehicles instrumented with forward-facing cameras and a sensor suite (accelerometer sampling at 20 Hz and GPS [variable sampling frequency]). From over 66 million miles of driving, 30 collision events were identified. A global optimization routine was
Campolettano, Eamon T.Scanlon, John M.Kusano, Kristofer D.
Compared to other age groups, older adults are at more significant risk of hip fracture when they fall. In addition to the higher risk of falls for the elderly, fear of falls can reduce this population’s outdoor activity. Various preventive solutions have been proposed to reduce the risk of hip fractures ranging from wearable hip protectors to indoor flooring systems. A previously developed rubberized asphalt mixture demonstrated the potential to reduce the risk of head injury. In the current study, the capability of the rubberized asphalt sample was evaluated for the risk of hip fracture for an average elderly male and an average elderly female. A previously developed human body model was positioned in a fall configuration that would give the highest impact forces toward regular asphalt. Three different rubber contents with 14, 28, 33 weight percent (% wt.) were implemented as the ground alongside one regular non-rubberized (0%) asphalt mixture, one baseline, and one extra-compliant
Sahandifar, PooyaWallqvist, VivecaKleiven, Svein
Many Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) experience injuries and fatalities every year, making road safety a challenge in the World. According to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highway (MoRTH) during the year 2021, a total number of 4,12,432 road accidents have been reported in India, claiming 1,53,972 lives and causing injuries to 3,84,448 persons. In terms of road-user categories, the total fatality of the Pedestrian road-users was 18.9 per cent of persons killed in road accidents. One of the ways to handle the situation is to protect pedestrians utilizing active safety measures in the vehicle. In addition, active safety research heavily relies on perceptions of pre-crash scenarios. The objective of the study is to examine passenger car-to-pedestrian scenarios and model active safety system in a car to prevent or mitigate collisions. Road Accident Sampling System – India (RASSI) database is used for this research, which provided a comprehensive set of accident data describing the
Doshi, Urvilkumar HItendrabhaiAgrawal, SauravMuthanandam, MuthukumarYarramsetti, KarthikPenumaka, AvinashKalakala, Vijaya Prakash
Designing an effective AVAS system, not only to meet safety regulations, but also to create the expected perception for the vulnerable road user, relies on knowledge of the acoustic transfer function between the sound actuator and the receiver. It is preferable that the acoustic transfer function be as constant as possible to allow transferring the sound designed by the car OEM to ensure the safety of vulnerable road users while conveying the proper brand image. In this paper three different methodologies for the acoustic transfer function calculations are presented and compared in terms of accuracy and calculation time: classic Boundary Element method, H-Matrix BEM accelerated method and Ray tracing method. An example of binaural listening experience at different certification positions in the modeled simulated space is also presented
Calloni, MassimilianoHadjit, RabahSalvekar, PinakMusser, Chadwyck
The commercial vehicle sector (especially trucks) has major role in economic growth of a nation. With improving infrastructure, increasing number of commercial vehicles and growing amount of Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) on roads, accidents are also increasing. As per RASSI (Road Accident Sampling System India) FY2016-21 database, commercial vehicles are involved in 43% of total accidents on Indian roads. One of the major causes of these accidents is Driver Drowsiness and Inattention (DDI) (approx. 10% contribution in total accidents). This paper describes novel driver-in-loop performance assessment methodology for comprehensive verification of Driver Monitoring System (DMS) for commercial vehicle application. Novelty lies in specification of test subjects, driving styles and variety of road traffic scenarios for verification of DMS system. Test setup is made modular to cater to different platform environments (Heavy, Intermediate, Light) with minor modifications. The test setup
Sudarshan, BVJarhad, ManojDey, Susanta KumarJoshi, Kedar ShrikantGadekar, Ganesh
This paper proposes a detection algorithm based on deep learning for Vulnerable Road Users such as pedestrians and cyclists, which is improved on the basis of YOLOv5 network model. (1) Aiming at the problems of low resolution and insufficient information for small targets, a multi-scale feature fusion method is adopted to integrate shallow features with deep features. In this way, the effective information of small target is enriched, and the accuracy of target detection is improved. (2) In view of the interference of image noise, background and other factors, the channel attention method is introduced to strengthen key features and suppress the interference of noise, which can improve the model's attention to small targets and enable the network to better identify blocked targets; (3) Aiming at the problem that the computing speed of the model is difficult to achieve real-time performance, a deep separable convolution optimization method is proposed to reduce the amount of computation
Yi, ZhenxingZhan, ZhenfeiZhou, GuilinLv, FengyaoMao, QingSun, Bowen
In this article, pedestrian crossing intention and pedestrian crossing style are studied by means of statistical theory and artificial neural network. Feature parameters such as the average speed of pedestrians, pedestrian attention to vehicles, and vehicle arrival speed are extracted before and during the time pedestrians cross the street from a bird’s-eye view. Based on these parameters, an artificial neural network is used to predict the pedestrian crossing intention. K-means statistical method was used to cluster the pedestrian crossing styles, and the results showed that clustering the crossing styles into three categories, conservative, cautious, and adventurous, has a better classification effect, and the crossing behaviors of different types of pedestrians were analyzed. A random forest-based model is used to identify pedestrian crossing styles, the prediction accuracy reaches 91.83% and the recognition accuracy reaches 93.3%. The research content of this article can provide
Li, WenliWang, MengxinGong, XiaohaoTang, Yuanhang
Letter from the Special Issue Editors
Mueller, BeckyBautsch, BrianMansfield, Julie
This SAE Information Report develops a concept of operations (ConOps) to evaluate a cooperative driving automation (CDA) Feature for occluded pedestrian collision avoidance using perception status sharing. It provides a test procedure to evaluate this CDA Feature, which is suitable for proof-of-concept testing in both virtual and test track settings
Cooperative Driving Automation(CDA) Committee
The knee is one of the regions of interest for pedestrian safety assessment. Past testing to study knee ligament injuries for pedestrian impact only included knees in full extension and mostly focused on global responses. As the knee flexion angle and the initial ligament laxity may affect the elongation at which ligaments fail, the objectives of this study were (1) to design an experimental protocol to assess the laxity of knee ligaments before measuring their elongation at failure, (2) to apply it in paired knee tests at two flexion angles (10 and 45 degrees). The laxity tests combined strain gauges to measure bone strains near insertions that would result from ligament forces and a custom machine to exercise the knee in all directions. Failure was assessed using a four-point bending setup with additional degrees of freedom on the axial rotation and displacement of the femur. A template was designed to ensure that the two setups used the exact same starting position. The protocol was
Benadi, SaharTrosseille, XavierPetit, PhilippeUriot, JérômeLafon, YoannBeillas, Philippe
The pedestrian is one of the most vulnerable road users and has experienced increased numbers of injuries and deaths caused by car-to-pedestrian collisions over the last decade. To curb this trend, finite element models of pedestrians have been developed to investigate pedestrian protection in vehicle impact simulations. While useful, modeling practices vary across research groups, especially when applying knee/ankle ligament and bone failure. To help better standardize modeling practices this study explored the effect of knee ligament and bone element elimination on pedestrian impact outcomes. A male 50th percentile model was impacted by three European generic vehicles at 30, 40, and 50 km/h. The pedestrian model was set to three element elimination settings: the “Off-model” didn’t allow any element erosion, the “Lig-model” allowed lower-extremity ligament erosion, and the “All-model” allowed lower-extremity ligament and bone erosion. Failure toggling had a significant effect on
Grindle, DanielUntaroiu, Costin
Autonomous driving systems (ADS) have been widely tested in real-world environments with operators who must monitor and intervene due to remaining technical challenges. However, intervention methods that require operators to take over control of the vehicle involve many drawbacks related to human performance. ADS consist of recognition, decision, and control modules. The latter two phases are dependent on the recognition phase, which still struggles with tasks involving the prediction of human behavior, such as pedestrian risk prediction. As an alternative to full automation of the recognition task, cooperative recognition approaches utilize the human operator to assist the automated system in performing challenging recognition tasks, using a recognition assistance interface to realize human-machine cooperation. In this study, we propose a recognition assistance interface for cooperative recognition in order to achieve safer and more efficient driving through improved human-automation
Kuribayashi, AtsushiTakeuchi, EijiroCarballo, AlexanderIshiguro, YoshioTakeda, Kazuya
E-vehicles can generate strong tonal components that may disturb people inside the vehicle. However, such components, deliberately generated, may be necessary to meet audibility standards that ensure the safety of pedestrians outside the vehicle. A tradeoff must be made between pedestrian audibility and internal sound quality, but any iteration that requires additional measurements is costly. One solution to this problem is to modify the recorded signals to find the variant with the best sound quality that complies with regulations. This is only possible if there is a good separation of the tonal components of the signal. In this work, a method is proposed that uses the High-resolution Spectral Analysis (HSA) to extract the tonal components of the signal, which can then be recombined to optimize any sound quality metric, such as the tonality using the Sottek Hearing Model (standardized in ECMA 418-2
Sottek, RolandGomes Lobato, Thiago Henrique
Speaker performance in Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System (AVAS) plays a crucial role for pedestrian safety. Sound radiation from AVAS speaker has obvious directivity pattern. Considering this feature is critical for accurately simulating the exterior sound field of electrical vehicles. This paper proposes a new process to characterize the sound directivity pattern of AVAS speaker. The first step of the process is to perform an acoustic testing to measure the sound pressure radiated from the speaker at a certain number of microphone locations in a free field environment. Based on the geometry of a virtual speaker, the locations of each microphone and measured sound pressure data, an inverse method, namely the inverse pellicular analysis, is adopted to recover a set of vibration pattern of the virtual speaker surface. The recovered surface vibration pattern can then be incorporated in the full vehicle numerical model as an excitation for simulating the exterior sound field. In this study
Yang, WenlongWang, ChongZhang, Qijun
Injury assessment by using a whole-body pedestrian dummy is one of the ways to investigate pedestrian safety performance of vehicles. The authors’ group has improved the biofidelity of the lower limb and the pelvis of the mid-sized male pedestrian dummy (POLAR III) by modifying those components. This study aims to evaluate the biofidelity of the whole-body response of the modified dummy in full-scale impact tests. The pelvis, the thigh and the leg of POLAR III have been modified in a past study by optimizing their compliance by means of the installation of plastic and rubber parts, which were used for the tests. The generic buck developed for the assessment of pedestrian dummy whole-body impact response and specified in SAE J3093 was used for this study. The buck representing the geometry of a small family car is comprised of six parts: lower bumper, bumper, grille, hood edge, hood and windshield. Tests were performed by conforming to SAE J2782 that specifies test conditions to
Asanuma, HiroyukiBae, HyejinNakamura, HidetoshiGunji, YasuakiNagashima, AkikoMori, Fumie
Testing vision-based advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) in a Camera-in-the-Loop (CiL) bench setup, where external visual inputs are used to stimulate the system, provides an opportunity to experiment with a wide variety of test scenarios, different types of vehicle actors, vulnerable road users, and weather conditions that may be difficult to replicate in the real world. In addition, once the CiL bench is setup and operating, experiments can be performed in less time when compared to track testing alternatives. In order to better quantify normal operating zones, track testing results were used to identify behavior corridors via a statistical methodology. After determining normal operational variability via track testing of baseline stationary surrogate vehicle and pedestrian scenarios, these operating zones were applied to screen-based testing in a CiL test setup to determine particularly challenging scenarios which might benefit from replication in a track testing environment
Bartholomew, Meredith CarolGuenther, DennisMidlam-Mohler, ShawnHeydinger, GaryForkenbrock, GarrickElsasser, DevinRao, Sughosh
Testing was conducted to evaluate the performance of the 2014 Subaru Forester’s North American Generation 1 EyeSight system at speeds between 6 and 57 miles per hour (mph). The testing utilized a custom-built foam stationary vehicle target designed to withstand 60+ mph impact speeds. Testing measured the Time to Collision (TTC) values of the visual/audible component of the forward collision warning that was presented to the driver. In addition, the testing quantified the TTC and Time to Collision 2 (TTC2) response of the Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) system including the timing and magnitude of the stage one braking response and the timing and magnitude of the stage two braking response. The results of the testing add higher speed Forward Collision Warning (FCW) and AEB testing scenarios to the database of publicly available tests from sources like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), which currently evaluates vehicles’ AEB systems at speeds of 12 and 25 mph
Harrington, ShawnMartin, Nicholas
Motor vehicle crashes involving child Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) remain a critical public health concern in the United States. While previous studies successfully utilized the crash scenario typology to examine traffic crashes, these studies focus on all types of motor vehicle crashes thus the method might not apply to VRU crashes. Therefore, to better understand the context and causes of child VRU crashes on the U.S. road, this paper proposes a multi-step framework to define crash scenario typology based on the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and the Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS). A comprehensive examination of the data elements in FARS and CRSS was first conducted to determine elements that could facilitate crash scenario identification from a systematic perspective. A follow-up context description depicts the typical behavioral, environmental, and vehicular conditions associated with an identified crash scenario. In addition, hypothesis tests are used to reveal
Guo, HuizhongWang, ZifeiSherony, RiniBao, Shan
To enable smooth and low-risk autonomous driving in the presence of other road users, such as cyclists and pedestrians, appropriate predictive safe speed control strategies relying on accurate and robust prediction models should be employed. However, difficulties related to driving scene understanding and a wide variety of features influencing decisions of other road users significantly complexifies prediction tasks and related controls. This paper proposes a hierarchical neural network (NN)-based prediction model of pedestrian crossing behavior, which is aimed to be applied within an autonomous vehicle (AV) safe speed control strategy. Additionally, different single-level prediction models are presented and analyzed as well, to serve as baseline approaches. The hierarchical NN model is designed to predict the probability of pedestrian crossing the crosswalk prior to the vehicle at the high level, and parameters of Gaussian probability distribution of pedestrian entry time to the
Ćorić, MateSkugor, BranimirDeur, JoskoIvanovic, VladimirTseng, H. Eric
Nowadays, the automobile industry is booming and the number of vehicles is proliferating while the road traffic environment is also deteriorating. Therefore, attention should be paid to the protection of vulnerable road users in traffic accidents, such as pedestrians. In order to reduce the pedestrians’ head injury in collision accidents, in this study, the vehicle engine hood which responds significantly to head injuries was taken as the design object, so as to put forward a new optimization design process. The parameters of the hood’s main components, manufacturing materials and structural scheme were considered to carry out simultaneous optimization from various aspects such as pedestrian protection and hood stiffness. Meanwhile, the approximate model approach was adopted to design the main parameters to improve the efficiency, and based on Bayesian inference, the approximate model bias correction method was proposed which solved the related problems of low accuracy of the
Zhan, ZhenfeiFengyao, LVXin, RanZhou, GuilinZhao, ShuenHe, XinWang, JuLi, Jie
The use of platforms to carry vulnerable road user (VRU) targets has become increasingly necessary with the rise of automated driver assistance systems (ADAS) on vehicles. These ADAS features must be tested in a wide variety of collision-imminent scenarios which necessitates the use of strikable targets carried by an overrun-able platform. To enable the testing of ADAS sensors such as lidar, radar, and vision systems, S-E-A, a longtime supplier of vehicle testing equipment, has created the STRIDE robotic platform (Small Test Robot for Individuals in Dangerous Environments). This platform contains many of the key ingredients of other platforms on the market, such as a hot-swappable battery, E-stop, and mounting points for targets. However, the STRIDE platform additionally provides features which can enable non-routine testing such as: turning in place, driving with an app on a mobile phone, user-scripting, and steep grade climbing capability. The combination of these elements makes
Bartholomew, MeredithHelber, NicholasNguyen, AnZagorski, ScottHeydinger, Gary
This SAE Recommended Practice describes common definitions and operational elements of Event Data Recorders. The SAE J1698 series of documents consists of the following: SAE J1698-1 - Event Data Recorder - Output Data Definition: Provides common data output formats and definitions for a variety of data elements that may be useful for analyzing vehicle crash and crash-like events that meet specified trigger criteria. SAE J1698-2 - Event Data Recorder - Retrieval Tool Protocol: Utilizes existing industry standards to identify a common physical interface and define the protocols necessary to retrieve records stored by light duty vehicle Event Data Recorders (EDRs). SAE J1698-3 - Event Data Recorder - Compliance Assessment: Defines procedures that may be used to validate that relevant EDR output records conform with the reporting requirements specified in Part 563, Table 1 during the course of FMVSS-208, FMVSS-214, and other applicable vehicle level crash testing
Event Data Recorder Committee
Self-driving cars, like the human drivers that preceded them, need to see what’s around them to avoid obstacles and drive safely
Driver distraction, or misjudgment is the most common causes of car accidents. As a result, the research and implementation of vehicle safety systems have accelerated in recent decades, making Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) critical for improving road safety. The study here focuses on, how to test ADAS, namely Autonomous Emergency Braking System (AEBS), by taking into account, things like, appropriate test environments, and traffic scenarios, as well as verification, and validation methodologies. For simulation, we have used IPG Carmaker to measure the braking efficiency of the vehicle, on a curved road path. In this paper, Ackermann’s geometry and Bicycle Model are also studied, in order to understand the dynamics of the vehicle, to enhance the accuracy of lateral distance estimation, especially during curved maneuvers
Kumar, V SudhirR, BalamuruganThiagarajan, RajaM, YaswanthKishore, A
Compared with images, point clouds contain more accurate position information, which is widely used on environmental perception of autonomous driving. In the process of perception, due to the complexity of the scene and the sparseness of point cloud, the results of recent methods that using a single detection head are not good. In addition, the huge differences between targets, not only different categories, but also different states of the same category, also brings challenges for detection. In this paper, we designed multiple detection heads with different groups, let different detection heads detect specific category while ignoring other categories, so that different detection heads can complete different tasks. According to the target shape and the number of target categories, we set different detection heads for different samples. Noted that the categories with similar target shape are divided into the same group. Experiments demonstrate that this method can improve the weighted
Li, RuiWang, YajunWang, DengjiangLiu, JianchaoMa, BingMa, Gang
This paper proposed a collision avoidance strategy that take over the control of ego vehicle when faced with urgent collision risk. To improve the applicability of collision avoidance strategy in complex scenarios, the theory of ICS (Inevitable Collision State) is introduced to evaluate the collision risk and compute the trigger flag of the system, and vehicle dynamic is taken into account when modeling ego vehicle to predict ego vehicle’s following moving. Vehicle specific characteristics including reaction time of the braking system and the braking force increasing process are taken into account. In order to reduce injury caused by collision accidents and minimize disruption to drivers, slight steering is added on top of emergency braking. The direction of the steering angle is determined according to IM (Imitating Maneuvers) The flow chart of the strategy is presented in the paper. Considering the more serious danger and higher mobility of scenarios involving VRU (Vulnerable Road
Wang, RuoqiYu, LiangyaoHuang, Yong
Vehicles that start moving from a stationary position can cause fatal traffic accidents involving pedestrians. Ultrasonic sensors installed in the vehicle front are an active technology designed to alert drivers to the presence of stationary objects such as rigid walls in front of their vehicles. However, the ability of such sensors to detect humans has not yet been established. Therefore, this study aims to ascertain whether these sensor systems can successfully detect humans. First, we conducted experiments using four vehicles equipped with ultrasonic sensor systems for vehicle-forward moving-off maneuvers and investigated the detection distances between the vehicles and a pipe (1 m long and having a diameter of 75 mm), child, adult female, or adult male. The detections of human volunteers were evaluated under two different conditions: front-facing and side-facing toward the front of each vehicle. Front-facing is defined as the condition where the human faces the vehicle front, while
Matsui, YasuhiroOikawa, Shoko
The improvement of road transport safety requires the development of advanced vehicle safety systems, whose development could be facilitated by using complex interaction models of different road users. To this end, this paper deals with the modeling of multi-vehicle/multi-pedestrian interactions at unsignalized crosswalks. This multi-agent modeling approach extends on the existing basic model covering only single-vehicle/single-pedestrian interactions. The basic model structure and parameters have remained the same, as it was previously experimentally calibrated and thoroughly verified. The proposed modeling procedure employs the basic model within the multi-agent setting based on its application to relevant single-vehicle and single-pedestrian pairs. The resulting, so-called pre-decisions are then used for making final crossing decisions in a current time step for each agent. During the decision making process, each pedestrian takes into account approaching vehicles and their expected
Pavelko, LeaSkugor, BranimirDeur, JoskoIvanovic, VladimirTseng, H. Eric
Acute repetitive traumatic brain injury (rTBI) can occur in a pedestrian collision when the head hits the vehicle and the ground twice, as well as in a serial rear-ended collision in a very short period. This study established an animal model of acute rTBI to investigate the cumulative effects of repetitive brain injury under different combinations of impact levels. 117 adult male Sprague–Dawley (SD) rats (190±20g) were divided into control, single impact, and repeated impact groups, with the single impact group was divided into three subgroups of mild, moderate, and severe. And the repeated impact group was divided into nine subgroups by combining mild, moderate, and severe. The kinematic response parameters of the rat’s head were captured by a high-speed camera and acceleration sensors. Modified neurological severity score (mNSS) was performed at 6h after final injury, and the severity of injury was quantified using the abbreviated injury scale (AIS). The results showed that
Li, KuiQiu, JinlongWang, PengZhao, Hui
Automobile hood design is driven by many factors, such as strict government regulations, fuel economy, weight, manufacturability, aerodynamic performance, aesthetics, structural integrity, and pedestrian safety standards. The requirement of improved fuel economy and safety regulations like pedestrian protection drive designers to reduce the thickness of the hood parts and use lighter materials. This leads to significant reduction in the hood stiffness. The hood needs to withstand steady and unsteady aerodynamic loads and meet deflection and vibration targets. The susceptibility of the hood to adverse aero load response is increased as the stiffness of the hood is reduced. The objective of this study is to develop a methodology to simulate hood behavior under transient aerodynamic loads in controlled environments. This study mainly focuses on developing fluid structure interaction methodology to simulate the behavior of the hood system under transient aerodynamic loads. A flat plate
Dighrasker, UmeshGuzman, ArturoSbeih, KhaledMorley, JohnB N V P S S L, NarayanaChoudhari, SatishDevendran, KarthikeyanAntonelli, Santiago
Collisions between opened doors and approaching vehicles such as bicycles are common occurrences in urban areas around the world. For example, in Chicago, 20% of all bicycle accidents involve collisions with doors, which occur over 300 times a year. In addition, there are concerns about a further rise in accidents due to the recent increase in home delivery services and bicycle commuting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) that are designed to help prevent this type of accident have already been introduced. These systems detect approaching vehicles with sensors and alert the person opening the door via LED lights or a buzzer when the door is opened. The occupant must understand the meaning of the alert and stop opening the door quickly to prevent an accident. However, if the occupant is an elderly person or a child, it is difficult to stop opening the door quickly. One possible countermeasure for this issue is an ADAS that completely locks the
Takeuchi, KojiIshida, Masaho
Frontal collision is the leading cause of passenger vehicle occupant death in the recent years. Active safety systems like automatic emergency braking has been demonstrated to be able to mitigate frontal collision or to reduce collision impact. However, braking is not as effective as steering when host vehicle is at high speed, since it typically requires more minimum safety distance for braking than for steering to avoid a frontal collision. Evasive steering assist (ESA) is designed to improve driver’s steer maneuver in the case of a potential imminent front collision with another vehicle or VRU. If driver initiates a steering maneuver but that steering input is not enough to avoid the collision, then evasive steering assist will kick in to apply an additional steering in the direction of the driver’s input, to help driver complete the evasive steering maneuver stably and safely. This paper discusses our recent development effort in ESA, including architecture design, path planning
Zhang, GuoguangWang, QianMujumdar, TapanSugiarto, Tanto
Felt-based dash panel insulation materials have traditionally been used as a sound barrier between the engine and passenger compartments in a vehicle to reduce the transmission of engine noise to the occupant space. Their structural performance has been mainly ignored due to the typically low stiffness and strength characteristics. Consequently, studies of the acoustic properties of these materials have been found in literature while no information was found on their mechanical behavior especially in dynamic loading conditions. More stringent requirements for occupant and pedestrian safety imposed by government regulations and the position of these materials in the impact zones of pedestrian head impact have brought attention to the material contribution to the energy absorption during the impact and the need to assess the mechanical properties of these materials. This paper presents tensile, compressive, and multiaxial impact results from tests conducted on two multi-layered felt
V S, RajamanickamKavi, SwaroopSavic, Vesna
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