Posted by: "swapan_bhattacharyya2001"
Tue Jan 10, 2012 8:07 pm (PST)
Crash-Free Commutes IEEE members work to make vehicles smarter and
saferBy KATHY KOWALENKO 6 January 2012 Photo: Luciano Covolo
If an airplane crashed every other day in the United States, killing all
180 people on board, it wouldn't take long for most Americans to
stop flying, right? But that's about the average number of daily
fatalities in the United States due to car accidents, and we continue to
drive fearlessly. There are about 33 000 traffic deaths annually in the
United States and 39 000 in European Union countries.

Ninety percent of roadway deaths could be avoided simply by making cars
smarter, according to Alberto Broggi and Azim Eskandarian of the IEEE
Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS). Their solution: Get
rid of the drivers and let the cars drive themselves.

That is not as farfetched as it might seem. Two driverless vans recently
drove themselves from Parma, Italy, to Shanghai, China, a distance of
more than 15 000 kilometers. The vans autonomously navigated over
highways, dirt roads, and desert terrain.

Driverless vehicles were one of the safety innovations discussed during
the ITSS annual conference, held in October in Washington, D.C.

COMPUTERIZED CHAUFFEUR

General Motors, Volkswagen, BMW, and other automakers, as well as Google
and a number of research labs, are working to make driverless cars a
reality. The road trip to China was the work of the artificial vision
research group VisLab of Parma, Italy. Broggi, an IEEE senior member and
president of the ITSS, is a pioneer of machine vision applied to
unmanned vehicles and is VisLab's founder and director.

In 2010 Broggi's group embarked on a test run of two driverless
vans, referred to as the VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge,
or VIAC. At the time the longest trip ever for driverless vehicles, it
took three months. The fully electric vans—manufactured by Piaggio,
better known for its Vespa scooters—were each outfitted with seven
cameras, four laser scanners, a GPS unit, and an inertial sensor suite.
Two cameras hanging above the windshield provided stereovision, used for
identifying lane markings and the terrain slope. Three synchronized
cameras behind the windshield stitched their images into a 180-degree
panoramic frontal view. The laser scanners—three mono-beam and one
four-plane laser beam—detected pedestrians, other vehicles, and
obstacles, including potholes.

Each vehicle also carried three computers. Two of them processed images
and laser data while the third integrated all the information and
planned a path—which in turn triggered controls for steering,
accelerating, and braking the vehicle. Solar panels atop the vans
powered the electronics. Software took the large panoramic image in
front of the vehicle and identified the lead van—they traveled in
pairs—even when approaching a tight turn or steep hill. It also
detected road markings and obstacles.

Because parts of the route were not mapped, autonomous planning by the
vehicles was not always possible, according to Broggi, so pairs of
vans—one with a driver and the other without one—traveled the
route together. The lead vehicle was partly manual and partly
autonomous. On straight roads or highways it was left to drive itself,
following the lane markings, but when decisions about the route had to
be made, a driver intervened and defined it. This van also conducted
experimental tests on sensing, decision, and control subsystems, and
collected data. 

The second van was totally autonomous. It used its cameras and
navigation system to follow the first; it visually tracked the lead van,
planned a path in real time, and generated controls for steering and
accelerating or braking. The vans averaged about 160 kilometers per day
at a maximum speed of 70 km/hour running four two-hour stretches each. A
pair of vans drove for two hours and then were taken off the road to
recharge their batteries, using power outlets along the way or, when
none were available, diesel generators carried in support trucks. Loaded
on a support truck, these cars were then driven to catch up with the two
vans that had replaced them on the road. 

This other pair then hit the road for its two-hour shift and then was
replaced by the recharged vans, and so on. The convoy included three
support trucks, which provided a mechanics shop and storage, and four
motor homes for sleeping accommodations. 

[read] Photo: VisLab
ACTIVE SAFETY

Nearly every collision attributed to driver error—that 90 percent
mentioned above—could be eliminated if intelligent transportation
technologies like the ones used in Broggi's driverless vans, added
to others already used in some vehicles, could be applied, according to
Eskandarian, director of the Center for Intelligent Systems Research at
George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., and a member of the
ITSS board of governors.

"Car accidents are purely manmade and so we should be able to
prevent them," he says. "We have by developing active safety
systems."

Such pre-emptive systems help the driver avoid collisions. Those already
in use include lane-departure warning systems that sound an alarm,
electronic stability-control programs that steady a vehicle when it
negotiates a curve, and automated cruise control that uses radar or
cameras to slow down a car when it gets too close to the one in front.
For the most part, the systems become active only when necessary,
Eskandarian notes. "But these technologies could someday take a much
more active role and allow the vehicle to drive itself," he
says.

Adds Broggi, "These systems will be much safer than human drivers
since these cars do not drink, get distracted, or drive under the
influence of drugs; they will always react properly."

SPEED BUMPS

While the technological challenges for more intelligent vehicles are
being addressed, the cost of such systems remains a roadblock.
They're expensive and so tend to be offered only in luxury cars.
But, Eskandarian notes, their prices are slowly coming down.

Price is not the only barrier to more widespread use, however.
Governments have not yet required that such safety features be installed
in all models, as they have for airbags and seatbelts. And more work is
needed on standards, because each active safety system has different
requirements designed by different manufacturers to their own
specifications.

Eskandarian points out that the IEEE Standards Association is working on
related areas, particularly in technologies concerning
vehicle-to-vehicle communication and vehicle-to-infrastructure
communication for such things as route selection, notification of
traffic jams, and other driving- and travel-related information. Already
rolled out are the IEEE Standard for Wireless Access in Vehicular
Environments that include Resource Manager, Security Services for
Applications and Management Messages, Networking Services, and
Multi-Channel Operation (IEEE Std. 1609.1-4) and a wireless standard for
vehicular environments (IEEE Std. 802.11p).

Meanwhile, the insurance industry has raised concerns about who would be
responsible if the systems fail and cause a collision. Who pays the
fine—the car's owner or the software's maker?

And designers of autonomous vehicles have their own concerns, Broggi
says. They need to be aware of nearly every scenario that can happen on
a road. One big challenge is programming for the dynamic environments of
city streets.

Eventually, drivers must be willing to accept that electronic systems
will take over control of their vehicles, Eskandarian says.

"The pubic needs to have an open mind about the car of the
future," he says. "Fuel-efficient cars capture a lot of
attention, but safety systems should capture just as much. Now that some
of these active safety technologies are available in luxury cars, we
need to speed up their implementation
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