Cyber Physical Systems – Situation Analysis - Energetics Meetings ...

Cyber Physical Systems – Situation AnalysisDRAFT – March 9, 2012cooperative driving—for example, California‘s Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways project(www.path.berkeley.edu), the European Union‘s Chauffeur project, and Japan‘s Demo 2000 CooperativeDriving System.The latest efforts extend cooperative driving technology to road intersections, which involve issues thatare more complex than lane changing and merging problems. For example, researchers have analyzedhow inter-vehicle peer-to-peer communications help vehicles near an intersection collaborate with eachother. They view each vehicle as an individual agent and estimate the proper driving schedule throughplanning (and perhaps negotiation). Then they modify virtual-vehicle mapping and the trajectory planningmethod to handle the collision-free requirements and vehicle (dynamic and geometric) constraints. Forexample, one can imagine that each vehicle approaching the intersection transmits its movementinformation and driving plan to the repeater installed at the intersection‘s center. The repeater thentransfers this information to other vehicles and to the network.Research along this path is restricted by the different technologies available in different vehicles, but itcould accelerate if automotive manufacturers agree on a communication protocol.Intelligent Sensing for Cyber-Physical Smart CarsAs noted earlier, technology trends in consumer automobiles are moving toward increased autonomy.Early developments in -CPS for vehicles include traction and stability control, cruise control, and antilockbraking systems that increase safety. Communication between vehicle components providesinformation such as velocity, acceleration, and traction for the purposes of navigation, infotainment, andother uses. These systems do not take control of the vehicle, but they provide information to the driverwho ultimately makes a decision on how to act. Safety behaviors such as shaking the steering wheel togain the driver‘s attention cannot alter the situation but can provide necessary information to the driver toenable action. Systems that perceive the environment outside the car as well as the environment inside thecar are of particular importance. Specific examples of these intelligent systems are discussed below.The state of the art considers three kinds of intelligent-vehicle sensing, namely out-vehicle environment,in-vehicle environment, and vehicle state.Out-vehicle environment sensing involves collecting information about the driving environment. Specifictopics include extracting lane boundaries when they are not clearly marked or in adverse weatherconditions; detecting other vehicles that are nearby and estimating their kinematics (position, speed, andacceleration); recognizing traffic signs and traffic lights; detecting unexpected traffic participants (such aspedestrians); and sensing obstacles of all kinds. Sensing the environment out of the vehicle is a verychallenging task, especially when weather changes are taken into account. Researchers have triedconventional vision-based pedestrian detection but this is a difficult task because pedestrians wear clothesin different styles and colors and may carry items such as bags, objects, or hats of different shapes. Inaddition, ambient illumination conditions (the sun hides behind the clouds for a moment) introducedistortions in the process. To deal with these problems, current research on the problem uses images fusedfrom multiple wavelengths. For example, research may use thermopile or infrared sensors and may fusethe images acquired from different sensors to increase robustness. There is also current research onrecognizing the weather, such as subspace methods to judge rainy weather by detecting raindrops on thewindshield. There is also current work on integrating lane detection and vehicle localization, as well asvehicle departure monitoring. Localization is also an important functionality for navigating intelligentvehicles. However, the data obtained from the global positioning system (GPS) and cameras is oftenuncertain or even momentarily unavailable (in urban areas, for example). Current approaches combine46