Intelligent vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) need to have proper awareness of the traffic context, as well as the driver status since ADAS share the vehicle control authorities ...with the human driver. This paper provides an overview of the ego-vehicle driver intention inference (DII), which mainly focuses on the lane change intention on highways. First, a human intention mechanism is discussed in the beginning to gain an overall understanding of the driver intention. Next, the ego-vehicle driver intention is classified into different categories based on various criteria. A complete DII system can be separated into different modules, which consist of traffic context awareness, driver states monitoring, and the vehicle dynamic measurement module. The relationship between these modules and the corresponding impacts on the DII are analyzed. Then, the lane change intention inference system is reviewed from the perspective of input signals, algorithms, and evaluation. Finally, future concerns and emerging trends in this area are highlighted.
Driver decisions and behaviors are essential factors that can affect the driving safety. To understand the driver behaviors, a driver activities recognition system is designed based on the deep ...convolutional neural networks (CNN) in this paper. Specifically, seven common driving activities are identified, which are the normal driving, right mirror checking, rear mirror checking, left mirror checking, using in-vehicle radio device, texting, and answering the mobile phone, respectively. Among these activities, the first four are regarded as normal driving tasks, while the rest three are classified into the distraction group. The experimental images are collected using a low-cost camera, and ten drivers are involved in the naturalistic data collection. The raw images are segmented using the Gaussian mixture model to extract the driver body from the background before training the behavior recognition CNN model. To reduce the training cost, transfer learning method is applied to fine tune the pre-trained CNN models. Three different pre-trained CNN models, namely, AlexNet, GoogLeNet, and ResNet50 are adopted and evaluated. The detection results for the seven tasks achieved an average of 81.6% accuracy using the AlexNet, 78.6% and 74.9% accuracy using the GoogLeNet and ResNet50, respectively. Then, the CNN models are trained for the binary classification task and identify whether the driver is being distracted or not. The binary detection rate achieved 91.4% accuracy, which shows the advantages of using the proposed deep learning approach. Finally, the real-world application are analyzed and discussed.
Lane detection is a fundamental aspect of most current advanced driver assistance systems ( ADASs ). A large number of existing results focus on the study of vision-based lane detection ...methods due to the extensive knowledge background and the low-cost of camera devices. In this paper, previous vision-based lane detection studies are reviewed in terms of three aspects, which are lane detection algorithms, integration, and evaluation methods. Next, considering the inevitable limitations that exist in the camera-based lane detection system, the system integration methodologies for constructing more robust detection systems are reviewed and analyzed. The integration methods are further divided into three levels, namely, algorithm, system, and sensor. Algorithm level combines different lane detection algorithms while system level integrates other object detection systems to comprehensively detect lane positions. Sensor level uses multi-modal sensors to build a robust lane recognition system. In view of the complexity of evaluating the detection system, and the lack of common evaluation procedure and uniform metrics in past studies, the existing evaluation methods and metrics are analyzed and classified to propose a better evaluation of the lane detection system. Next, a comparison of representative studies is performed. Finally, a discussion on the limitations of current lane detection systems and the future developing trends toward an Artificial Society, Computational experiment-based parallel lane detection framework is proposed.
Next-generation vehicle control and future autonomous driving require further advances in vehicle dynamic state estimation. This article provides a concise review, along with the perspectives, of the ...recent developments in the estimation of vehicle dynamic states. The definitions used in vehicle dynamic state estimation are first introduced, and alternative estimation structures are presented. Then, the sensor configuration schemes used to estimate vehicle velocity, sideslip angle, yaw rate and roll angle are presented. The vehicle models used for vehicle dynamic state estimation are further summarized, and representative estimation approaches are discussed. Future concerns and perspectives for vehicle dynamic state estimation are also discussed.
In order to design an advanced human-automation collaboration system for highly automated vehicles, research into the driver's neuromuscular dynamics is needed. In this paper, a dynamic model of ...drivers' neuromuscular interaction with a steering wheel is first established. The transfer function and the natural frequency of the systems are analyzed. In order to identify the key parameters of the driver-steering-wheel interacting system and investigate the system properties under different situations, experiments with driver-in-the-loop are carried out. For each test subject, two steering tasks, namely the passive and active steering tasks, are instructed to be completed. Furthermore, during the experiments, subjects manipulated the steering wheel with two distinct postures and three different hand positions. Based on the experimental results, key parameters of the transfer function model are identified by using the Gauss-Newton algorithm. Based on the estimated model with identified parameters, investigation of system properties is then carried out. The characteristics of the driver neuromuscular system are discussed and compared with respect to different steering tasks, hand positions, and driver postures. These experimental results with identified system properties provide a good foundation for the development of a haptic take-over control system for automated vehicles.
Driver decisions and behaviors regarding the surrounding traffic are critical to traffic safety. It is important for an intelligent vehicle to understand driver behavior and assist in driving tasks ...according to their status. In this paper, the consumer range camera Kinect is used to monitor drivers and identify driving tasks in a real vehicle. Specifically, seven common tasks performed by multiple drivers during driving are identified in this paper. The tasks include normal driving, left-, right-, and rear-mirror checking, mobile phone answering, texting using a mobile phone with one or both hands, and the setup of in-vehicle video devices. The first four tasks are considered safe driving tasks, while the other three tasks are regarded as dangerous and distracting tasks. The driver behavior signals collected from the Kinect consist of a color and depth image of the driver inside the vehicle cabin. In addition, 3-D head rotation angles and the upper body (hand and arm at both sides) joint positions are recorded. Then, the importance of these features for behavior recognition is evaluated using random forests and maximal information coefficient methods. Next, a feedforward neural network (FFNN) is used to identify the seven tasks. Finally, the model performance for task recognition is evaluated with different features (body only, head only, and combined). The final detection result for the seven driving tasks among five participants achieved an average of greater than 80% accuracy, and the FFNN tasks detector is proved to be an efficient model that can be implemented for real-time driver distraction and dangerous behavior recognition.
In present-day highly-automated vehicles, there are occasions when the driving system disengages and the human driver is required to take-over. This is of great importance to a vehicle ʼ s ...safety and ride comfort. In the U.S state of California, the Autonomous Vehicle Testing Regulations require every manufacturer testing autonomous vehicles on public roads to submit an annual report summarizing the disengagements of the technology experienced during testing. On 1 January 2016, seven manufacturers submitted their first disengagement reports: Bosch, Delphi, Google, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and Tesla Motors. This work analyses the data from these disengagement reports with the aim of gaining abetter understanding of the situations in which a driver is required to takeover, as this is potentially useful in improving the Society of Automotive Engineers ( SAE ) Level 2 and Level 3 automation technologies. Disengagement events from testing are classified into different groups based on attributes and the causes of disengagement are investigated and compared in detail. The mechanisms and time taken for take-over transition occurred in disengagements are studied. Finally, recommendations for OEMs, manufacturers, and government organizations are also discussed.
This paper introduces a control strategy to recover from various spin motions to level trim flight conditions, utilizing a fixed-time nonsingular terminal sliding mode approach to minimize altitude ...loss. Firstly, an integral terminal sliding mode surface is constructed to guarantee the tracking errors of the spin recovery system converge to the origin within a fixed time and avoid the singularity problem. Next, a fixed-time type reaching law is proposed to weaken the chattering phenomenon and guarantee terminal sliding hyperplanes converge to zero in a fixed time. Furthermore, the stability analysis indicates the fixed-time convergence stability of the spin recovery control system and provides an accurate calculation of the settling time. Finally, comparative simulations are performed to validate the effectiveness and superiority of the developed spin recovery control scheme.
A prescribed performance neural controller to guaran-tee tracking quality is addressed for the near space kinetic kill vehi-cle (NSKKV) to meet the state constraints caused by side window detection. ...Different from the traditional prescribed performance control in which the shape of the performance function is constant, this paper exploits new performance functions which can change the shape of their function according to different symbols of initial errors and can ensure the error convergence with a small over-shoot. The neural backstepping control and the minimal learning parameters (MLP) technology are employed for exploring a pre-scribed performance controller (PPC) that provides robust tracking attitude reference trajectories. The highlight is that the transient performance of tracking errors is satisfactory and the computa-tional load of neural approximation is low. The pseudo rate (PSR) modulator is used to shape the continuous control command to pulse or on-off signals to meet the requirements of the thruster. Numerical simulations show that the proposed method can achieve state constraints, pseudo-linear operation and high accuracy.
Although at present legislation does not allow drivers in a Level 3 autonomous vehicle to engage in a secondary task, there may become a time when it does. Monitoring the behaviour of drivers ...engaging in various non-driving activities (NDAs) is crucial to decide how well the driver will be able to take over control of the vehicle. One limitation of the commonly used face-based head tracking system, using cameras, is that sufficient features of the face must be visible, which limits the detectable angle of head movement and thereby measurable NDAs, unless multiple cameras are used. This paper proposes a novel orientation sensor based head tracking system that includes twin devices, one of which measures the movement of the vehicle while the other measures the absolute movement of the head. Measurement error in the shaking and nodding axes were less than 0.4°, while error in the rolling axis was less than 2°. Comparison with a camera-based system, through in-house tests and on-road tests, showed that the main advantage of the proposed system is the ability to detect angles larger than 20° in the shaking and nodding axes. Finally, a case study demonstrated that the measurement of the shaking and nodding angles, produced from the proposed system, can effectively characterise the drivers' behaviour while engaged in the NDAs of chatting to a passenger and playing on a smartphone.