Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Preventing traffic accidents before they happen?

Scientists and researchers across Europe are working in concert to build a new automotive system that fuses information from a wide variety of sources to predict hazardous situations that could lead to an accident.

The system will give drivers early warning of accidents waiting to happen, and thus help drivers avoid crashes and other problems.

A novelty of the system is that it uses comparatively simple and low-cost technologies, many of which already exist. By combining the various information streams and analysing them for potential problems, the researchers hope to develop a powerful safety system that can be deployed rapidly and at little cost.

“We use information from in-vehicle sensors, car-to-car communication and communication with roadside infrastructure to create a picture of driving conditions in real time,” explains Andrea Migliavacca, coordinator of the I-WAY project.

Notable successes

The EU-funded project still has some time to go before completing, but it has already scored a number of notable research successes.

“We are very pleased with our video system for road observation,” reveals Migliavacca. “Our partners wanted a simple, low-maintenance and easy to install unit that could still provide useful information, and we have developed a unit that responds to their needs. They’re very happy with it.”

The external video is used to ensure the driver stays in the correct lane and is one of a series of subsystems used in the I-WAY platform. Some parts, like the radar, have come off the shelf, while other elements, such as the car-to-car communication, were supplied by other European research.

“We did not try to reinvent the wheel,” says Migliavacca. “If there was another European project working on a system we could use, we took that. So we got the car-to-car communication technology from the ‘Car to Car’ communications consortium. They have done a lot of work on this area that we benefited from.”

Recruiting scouts

Car-to-car information turns other road users into scouts. If another car encounters a hazard, it can broadcast that information to nearby vehicles. Similarly, roadside sensors and communication systems, used by the highway control centre to track road conditions, can transmit important information to drivers as they pass by.

Then can warn of oncoming lane closures, temporarily lowered speed limits, road conditions and traffic jams, among others.

Internal sensors complete the package of subsystems. The team developed in-car cameras to monitor the driver as well as grip and electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors on the steering wheel.

The grip and ECG sensors, combined with the eye-tracking internal camera, can reveal the state of the driver, if he or she is stressed, for example.

Situation assessment

I-WAY has completed the first generation of the basic subsystems, and over the coming months it will integrate these systems and test the control software. “This is a situation assessment software, basing its assessment on the information from all the various sensors,” reveals Migliavacca.

“It is primarily intended for highway driving and it is not aimed at accident mitigation, rather it is intended to anticipate hazardous situations and help prevent accidents.”

The computer that will run the assessment software is another early success of the project. “It is a stack computer,” Migliavacca explains. “It is special hardware to manage all the inputs. It is a very good, well engineered solution and it is so successful that it is already available on the market and selling quite well.”

Migliavacca takes particular pride in this result, noting that it is unusual to develop commercially successful technology midway through a project.

In addition to the integration work, the project will continue to improve the basic subsystems.

Christian Nielsen | alfa
Further information:
http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults
http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm/section/news/tpl/article/BrowsingType/Features/ID/90166

Im Focus: AchemAsia 2019 will take place in Shanghai

Moving into its fourth decade, AchemAsia is setting out for new horizons: The International Expo and Innovation Forum for Sustainable Chemical Production will take place from 21-23 May 2019 in Shanghai, China. With an updated event profile, the eleventh edition focusses on topics that are especially relevant for the Chinese process industry, putting a strong emphasis on sustainability and innovation.

Founded in 1989 as a spin-off of ACHEMA to cater to the needs of China’s then developing industry, AchemAsia has since grown into a platform where the latest...

Im Focus: First real-time test of Li-Fi utilization for the industrial Internet of Things

The BMBF-funded OWICELLS project was successfully completed with a final presentation at the BMW plant in Munich. The presentation demonstrated a Li-Fi communication with a mobile robot, while the robot carried out usual production processes (welding, moving and testing parts) in a 5x5m² production cell. The robust, optical wireless transmission is based on spatial diversity; in other words, data is sent and received simultaneously by several LEDs and several photodiodes. The system can transmit data at more than 100 Mbit/s and five milliseconds latency.

Modern production technologies in the automobile industry must become more flexible in order to fulfil individual customer requirements.

Im Focus: Sharp images with flexible fibers

An international team of scientists has discovered a new way to transfer image information through multimodal fibers with almost no distortion - even if the fiber is bent. The results of the study, to which scientist from the Leibniz-Institute of Photonic Technology Jena (Leibniz IPHT) contributed, were published on 6thJune in the highly-cited journal Physical Review Letters.

Endoscopes allow doctors to see into a patient’s body like through a keyhole. Typically, the images are transmitted via a bundle of several hundreds of optical...

Im Focus: Photoexcited graphene puzzle solved

A boost for graphene-based light detectors

Light detection and control lies at the heart of many modern device applications, such as smartphone cameras. Using graphene as a light-sensitive material for...

Im Focus: Water is not the same as water

Water molecules exist in two different forms with almost identical physical properties. For the first time, researchers have succeeded in separating the two forms to show that they can exhibit different chemical reactivities. These results were reported by researchers from the University of Basel and their colleagues in Hamburg in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

From a chemical perspective, water is a molecule in which a single oxygen atom is linked to two hydrogen atoms. It is less well known that water exists in two...