Ljubo Vlacic

Cooperative autonomous driving: intelligent vehicles sharing city roads

The paper presents the Intelligent Control System Laboratorys (ICSL) Cooperative Autonomous Mobile Robot technologies and their application to intelligent vehicles for cities. The deployed decision and control algorithms made the road-scaled vehicles capable of undertaking cooperative autonomous maneuvers. Because the focus of ICSLs research is in decision and control algorithms, it is therefore reasonable to consider replacing or upgrading the sensors used with more recent road sensory concepts as produced by other research groups. While substantial progress has been made, there are still some issues that need to be addressed such as: decision and control algorithms for navigating roundabouts, real-time integration of all data, and decision-making algorithms to enable intelligent vehicles to choose the driving maneuver as they go. With continued research, it is feasible that cooperative autonomous vehicles will coexist alongside human drivers in the not-too-distant future.

Accurate Global Localization Using Visual Odometry and Digital Maps on Urban Environments

Over the past few years, advanced driver-assistance systems (ADASs) have become a key element in the research and development of intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) and particularly of intelligent vehicles. Many of these systems require accurate global localization information, which has been traditionally performed by the Global Positioning System (GPS), despite its well-known failings, particularly in urban environments. Different solutions have been attempted to bridge the gaps of GPS positioning errors, but they usually require additional expensive sensors. Vision-based algorithms have proved to be capable of tracking the position of a vehicle over long distances using only a sequence of images as input and with no prior knowledge of the environment. This paper describes a full solution to the estimation of the global position of a vehicle in a digital road map by means of visual information alone. Our solution is based on a stereo platform used to estimate the motion trajectory of the ego vehicle and a map-matching algorithm, which will correct the cumulative errors of the vision-based motion information and estimate the global position of the vehicle in a digital road map. We demonstrate our system in large-scale urban experiments reaching high accuracy in the estimation of the global position and allowing for longer GPS blackouts due to both the high accuracy of our visual odometry estimation and the correction of the cumulative error of the map-matching algorithm. Typically, challenging situations in urban environments such as nonstatic objects or illumination exceeding the dynamic range of the cameras are shown and discussed.

Emulation-Based Virtual Laboratories: A Low-Cost Alternative to Physical Experiments in Control Engineering Education

This paper argues the case for emulation-based virtual laboratories in control engineering education. It demonstrates that such emulation experiments can give students an industrially relevant educational experience at relatively low cost. The paper also describes a particular emulation-based system that has been developed with the aim of giving students an introduction to real-world control engineering design.

Experimental system for real-time motion estimation

Motion can be a useful sensory dimension for autonomous navigation if it is available in real time. In this paper we present our approach to real time motion processing giving an outline of the algorithm and hardware architecture we have developed. We then describe in more detail how this architecture is being implemented using FPGA technology.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Emergent Cooperative Technologies in Intelligent Transportation Systems

The ten papers in this special issue cover the full range of cooperative technologies in Intelligent Transportation Systems, from V2V and V2I, including cooperative traffic management to vehicle-to-driver cooperation. These papers are summarized here.

Autonomous driving manoeuvres in urban road traffic environment: a study on roundabouts

Abstract The highway and urban traffic safety has significantly been improved thanks to advanced development of Intelligent Transportation Systems technologies. However, some driving aspects have remained outside of this evolution or they are still in the development stage. Autonomous vehicle performance on roundabouts is one of these. In this paper, a simple and practical approach for the driverless control on roundabouts is described. Firstly, a description of a path planning is explained. Finally, a new concept for lateral control on roundabouts is introduced, taking into account entrances, exits and lane changes inside the roundabouts. The experiments have been tested in a 3D simulator that emulates the behaviour of driverless vehicle from the real world, – Cybercars. The results are promising, and leave the door open for future implementation in real vehicles.

Towards increased road safety: Real-time decision making for driverless city vehicles

This work elaborates on the topic of decision making for driverless city vehicles, particularly focusing on the aspects on how to develop a reliable approach which meets the requirements of safe city traffic. Decision making in this context refers to the problem of identifying the most appropriate driving maneuver to be performed in a given traffic situation. The overall decision making problem is decomposed into two consecutive stages. The first stage is safety-crucial, representing the decision regarding the set of feasible driving maneuvers. The second stage represents the decision regarding the most appropriate driving maneuver from the set of feasible ones. The developed decision making approach has been implemented in C++ and initially tested in a 3D simulation environment and, thereafter, in real-world experiments. The real-world experiments also included the integration of wireless communication between vehicles.

Mechatronics in engineering design and product development

System technology: sensors and actuators in mechatronics microsensors and microactuators microcomputer technology intelligent controllers communication systems. Design approaches: conceptual design computer-aided design of automotive control systems using MATLAB, Simulink and Stateflow rapid protoyping of mechanical and electronic subsystems of mechatronic products. Design-related issues: system integration optimality of system performance system software. Application-related issues: mechatronic system applications an operators model for control and optimization of mechatronic processes ethics in product design.

TEACHING CONTROL: BENEFITS OF ANIMATED TUTORIALS FROM VIEWPOINT OF CONTROL STUDENTS

Abstract Significant developments in the effective teaching of control education over the past few decades, since the emergence of new software and IT technologies, have made control education more efficient. Animated Tutorials are a clear illustration of this, and will aid control engineering students in their quest to study control topics in a productive and cost effective manner. This paper discusses how these animated tutorials can benefit control engineering students. However, there is a need for educators to work more closely with Multimedia and Software development in conjunction with animated tutorials to make teaching more effective.

An object-oriented design of a World Model for autonomous city vehicles

This paper presents an object-oriented world model for the road traffic environment of autonomous (driver-less) city vehicles. The developed World Model is a software component of the autonomous vehicles control system, which represents the vehicles view of its road environment. Regardless whether the information is a priori known, obtained through on-board sensors, or through communication, the World Model stores and updates information in real-time, notifies the decision making subsystem about relevant events, and provides access to its stored information. The design is based on software design patterns, and its application programming interface provides both asynchronous and synchronous access to its information. Experimental results of both a 3D simulation and real-world experiments show that the approach is applicable and real-time capable.