Wuling Huang

Cyber-physical-social system in intelligent transportation

A cyber-physical system (CPS) is composed of a physical system and its corresponding cyber systems that are tightly fused at all scales and levels. CPS is helpful to improve the controllability, efficiency and reliability of a physical system, such as vehicle collision avoidance and zero-net energy buildings systems. It has become a hot R&D and practical area from US to EU and other countries. In fact, most of physical systems and their cyber systems are designed, built and used by human beings in the social and natural environments. So, social systems must be of the same importance as their CPSs. The indivisible cyber, physical and social parts constitute the cyber-physical-social system (CPSS), a typical complex system and its a challengeable problem to control and manage it under traditional theories and methods. An artificial systems, computational experiments and parallel execution (ACP) methodology is introduced based on which data-driven models are applied to social system. Artificial systems, i.e., cyber systems, are applied for the equivalent description of physical-social system (PSS). Computational experiments are applied for control plan validation. And parallel execution finally realizes the stepwise control and management of CPSS. Finally, a CPSS-based intelligent transportation system (ITS) is discussed as a case study, and its architecture, three parts, and application are described in detail.

OSGi based integrated service platform for automotive telematics

With the enormous market potentials of telematics industry and for further gains in safety and convenience, automotive telematics has become a hot R&D area in mobile computing and ITS. Quite a number of telematics services have been proposed by automakers and third-party service providers. This paper describes an OSGi based in-vehicle telematics service platform, by which telematics services can be accessed by end users. Both the hardware and software platforms are analyzed from the application and implementation points of view. Finally, application examples are introduced and some concluding remarks are drawn for this paper.

An automated vehicle counting system for traffic surveillance

The objective of this paper is to present a detailed description of using DSP board and image processing techniques to construct an automated vehicle counting system. Such a system has many potential applications, such as traffic signal control and district traffic abduction. We use TITMS320DM642 DSP as the computational unit to avoid heavy investment in industrial control computer while obtaining improved computational power and optimized system structure. The overall software is comprised of two parts: embedded DSP software and host PC software. The embedded DSP software acquires the video image from stationary cameras, detects and counts moving vehicles, and transmits the processing results and realtime images after compression to PC software through network. The host PC software works as a graphic user interface through which the end user can configure the DSP board parameters and access the video processing results. The vehicle detection and counting algorithm is carefully devised to keep robust and efficient in traffic scenes for longtime span and with changeful illumination. Experimental results show that the proposed system performs well in actual traffic scenes, and the processing speed and accuracy of the system can meet the requirement of practical applications.

Task-Specific Performance Evaluation of UGVs: Case Studies at the IVFC

Performance evaluation is considered as an important part of the unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) development; it helps to discover research problems and improves driving safety. In this paper, a task-specific performance evaluation model of UGVs applied in the Intelligent Vehicle Future Challenge (IVFC) annual competitions is discussed. It is defined in functional levels with a formal evaluation process, including metrics analysis, metrics preprocessing, weights calculation, and a technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation methods. IVFC 2012 is selected as a case study and overall performances of five UGVs are evaluated with specific analyzed autonomous driving tasks of environment perception, structural on-road driving, unstructured zone driving, and dynamic path planning. The model is proved to be helpful in IVFC serial competition UGVs performance evaluation.

Design of an OSEK/VDX and OSGi-based embedded software platform for vehicular applications

This paper addresses an OSEK/VDX and OSGi-based embedded software platform for vehicular applications. Basically, it is a wireless and networked distributed service system and consists of (1) an OSEK/VDX-based vehicular application specific embedded operating systems platform; (2) an OSGi-based automotive service system which is composed of automotive central service platform, remote vehicular service platform and vehicle/home interactive platform. The system is deployed by integrating the functions of communication, navigation, entertainment, diagnostics, monitoring and many others. Meanwhile, by using wireless network, it realizes the interconnection among vehicles, home service platform, remote vehicular service center and roadside systems.

Intelligence Testing for Autonomous Vehicles: A New Approach

In this paper, we study how to test the intelligence of an autonomous vehicle. Comprehensive testing is crucial to both vehicle manufactories and customers. Existing testing approaches can be categorized into two kinds: scenario-based testing and functionality-based testing. We first discuss the shortcomings of these two kinds of approaches, and then propose a new testing framework to combine the benefits of them. Based on the new semantic diagram definition for the intelligence of autonomous vehicles, we explain how to design a task for autonomous vehicle testing and how to evaluate test results. Experiments show that this new approach provides a quantitative way to test the intelligence of an autonomous vehicle.

A Genetic Algorithms based optimization for TTCAN

Controller Area Network (CAN), a typical event- triggered protocol, has been widely used in constructing distributed real time network. A common opinion is that the arbitration mechanism of CAN might introduce jitters, which is highly undesirable in time and safety critical applications. Time-triggered protocols address exactly the problem. Time- triggered protocols, such as Flexray, Time-Triggered CAN (TTCAN) and Time-Triggered Protocol (TTP/C), have been applied in time and safety critical applications because they provide deterministic response times for time and safety critical tasks. Recently, much attention has been paid to them. TTCAN, a time-triggered extension of CAN, can easily apply to the numerous of existing CAN-implementations in a wide range of real time requirement fields. A key problem of TTCAN is how to design an effective scheduling table off-line. In this paper, we analyze message set and design scheduling table from a new angle of view, and the key point of the view is to make event-triggered messages gain the maximum transmission times by minimizing the space occupied by time-triggered messages. Then a Genetic Algorithms (GAs) based method is proposed to optimize the scheduling table consequently.

Performance evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer

ZigBee is arguably the most prominent alliance dedicated to low-power embedded system. Its PHY and MAC layer protocols rely on the specification of IEEE 802.15.4. In this paper, we briefly detail the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer protocol, especially the slotted CSMA/CA algorithm. Then we calculated the average transmission delay. At last, we proposed an improved algorithm of the average transmission delay time, compared the result with the original algorithm and illustrated the simulations application scenarios.

Applicability of short range wireless networks in V2I applications

It is challenging to meet the reliability and timing requirements of wireless networks used in highly dynamic V2I applications. This paper analyzes the selected wireless networks path loss model in V2I scenarios and defines the applicability indicators, then describes their simulation models and analyses the PHY layer simulation results, and then tests their applicability in V2I scenarios, including the tests configurations and results analysis of PER, communication latency and networks access delay. Finally, the conclusions of selected wireless networks applicability in V2I applications are made.

A Hierarchical Bus Rapid Transit System Based on Wireless Sensor Networks

Bus rapid transit (BRT) system is the key technology of intelligent transportation systems (ITS). This paper is about the research on a hierarchical BRT system based on multi-tier wireless sensor networks (WSN). It maps the features of WSN to BRT system and provides solutions for BRT technologies, such as transit signal priority.