I-Corps: Development of Active Driving Assistance (ADA) Systems for Safety Enhancement and Real Time Traffic Mapping

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

As more and more driverless vehicles are prepared to be introduced into the marketplace, companies such as Qualcomm, Cisco, and numerous OEMs including BMW, Daimler, Ford, Honda and Toyota are developing systems to identify in real time the traffic environment and conditions encountered by these vehicles while driving. Their attempt to provide rapid and accurate information can be limited by the complexity of the communication systems used, weather conditions and signal interference. This team believes that its proposed technology, using a smartphone based system that gathers, processes and delivers information, via real-time message exchange between host and neighboring vehicles, can help to overcome these limitations, providing useful information more quickly compared to existing technology and products, and thus reduces the chance for crashes and other negative events. The proposed technology can also be used by today's driver-controlled vehicles to determine driving directions that are based on our ability to better sense real-time traffic conditions. This provides the most efficient route to a destination, which is critical for users such as first responders and logistics carriers who need to get to a destination quickly and cost-effectively. The proposed system is a smart-phone based API integrating short-range communication system (DSRC), global positioning system (GPS) satellite data and video streams of real time traffic and road conditions the vehicle is encountering. Moreover, a digital beam forming antenna array is adopted to further improves signal strength and limits interference from other directions. The images captured are processed in real time to recognize drivable regions, and to locate and track vehicles through effective signal processing algorithms. This provides drivers or self-driving systems with real time information about surrounding transportation environments quickly and thus enhance driving efficacy.