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A new concept for communication for platooning of leader-follower vehicles is presented. The leader vehicle is equipped by a omni directional camera and laser radar. The omni directional camera can capture a omni directional views and the view information is used to autonomously control the leader vehicle. The laser radar set to the rear part of the leader vehicle detects the relative distance and angle of the follower vehicle. By the information of the relative position and angle of the follower vehicle, control instructions are generated and sent via vehicle-to-vehicle communication between the leader vehicle and the follower vehicle.

The sensing and control scheme of autonomous vehicle, learned from the human driving is considered. To implement human driving manners, we imitate “characteristics of the human eye” and “human driving rules extracted from driver’s feeling”. Following two approaches are considered; 1. Reduction of image processing load of FFT picture compression technique by the manner of human eye sensitivity. 2. Simplified driving rules extracted from the human driving manner correspond to the energy minimum optimal control.

This paper proposes how to develop an autonomous vehicle for factory and/or storehouse use. Where the geometric arrangement changes frequently due to the turnover of the cargo. We apply the sensor fusion technique by use of the Omni directional image sensor and laser radar generate the map of such situations. We propose a new update algorithm called SMT (Shift Matching Transform) that obtains region segments with trusted semi-real-time geometric map. We demonstrate how to determined the absolute position of the vehicle by the position information of arbitrary wall. Experimental results on the corridor, Shows the semi-real-time map reconstruction with enough validity.

The project of the ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) has been actively promoted researches and developments for the safe and efficient traffic. In the project, development of the lane detection algorithm is indispensable. Under outdoor environment, it is very difficult to detect a lane and to distinguish the various obstacles by vision systems, due to optical problems. Here we propose the Active Contour Model Method, which is known as the most robust method to detect the lane contour. The vehicle based on an electric wheelchair for handicapped persons was used to examine the validity of the method.

Two-valve pent-roof type combustion chamber was employed for four stroke cycle small utility engine. The preliminary performance test showed the higher output was obtained by pent-roof type combustion chamber than the conventional bathtub type combustion chamber. CFD analysis and PIV flow visualization proved that the tumble flow is dominant in pent-roof type combustion chamber. From the investigation of the relationship between the tumble ratio and the engine performance by combustion analysis and cycle simulation, it was found out that the tumble ratio from 0.8 to 1.6 is optimal for engine output. By applying the pent-roof type combustion chamber, the developed engines achieved 7-12% increase in output, 8-10% reduction in BSFC. As for the emission, the developed engines can satisfy the CARB regulations.

An automatically guided vehicle by vision that recognizes the two white guidelines has been developed. The vehicle can run on a mildly bumpy grass course like as golf course up to 3 km/hour, staying in between two white lines with span of 3m to 3.6m avoiding obstacles within lanes. In this paper, the construction of the vehicle, the sensing strategy, the control algorithm, as well as practical aspects of the implementation are described. Employment of 1D image sensor which detects two white lanes yields the remarkable feature of the proposed system. The advantage of 1-D image sensor is the simplicity as well as significant reduction of the task for image processing in comparison with the conventional 2D-camera vision. Through the actual experiments at International Ground Robotics Competition '97, which held at Oakland University in June, we demonstrated the superior performance compared with conventional 2D vision type vehicles.

This paper describes the accurate and detailed estimation of traffic conditions around our vehicle on road by the incomplete laser radar signals. The conventional laser radar system monitors only one vehicle that runs just in front of the our vehicle. Careful observation of the laser radar signals includes more information than that required. This research aims at developing a new traffic condition monitoring system that monitors 8 to 10 vehicles that run around our vehicle by fully using the signals from the radar.

The advanced safe driving of vehicles have fully depended on the development of the safe driving systems. The final strategy must take the drivers skill into account. This paper describes a method to detect and evaluate driving skill. We present a new system to measure the curvature of driving loci against the distance by using speed and rate gyro sensors and present a method to extract the driving curvature from that of road itself. It includes the information of drivers' skill by which the driving conditions can be evaluated.

This paper describes a fuzzy logic (FL) approach to the design, implementation, and tuning of an expert knowledge-based TCS for a four-wheel drive vehicle. Military and commercial mutual interests in TCS technology are highlighted as the underlying motivation for this government, industry, academia cooperative program. Coordinated parallel efforts to model the TCS equipped vehicle and to perform basic on-vehicle TCS experiments provided additional information to augment the knowledge obtained from a study of commercial TCSs and the tire traction literature. The general traction control problem is discussed along with the hardware considerations for a TCS. The design and integration of the resulting FL-based TCS are described along with a representative sample of the test results documenting the system's performance.

This paper describes a new type of absolute speedometer of automobiles. It is known that the electric field intensity of the radio waves in the UHF/VHF range exhibits spatial periodic patterns due to the multi-pass fading phenomenon. We employ this pattern as the spatial scale for speed measurement. In this method, first two antennae set at the front and rear site of vehicle detects the pattern. Next a micro processor estimate the speed by calculating delay time between the two patterns detected. We have examined if the pattern can be used as the spatial scale for speed measurement by laboratory experiments. We found it could1). In this paper we consider how to realize an automobile speedometer based on the above idea.

Accurate information of the absolute speed of a vehicle, when available, can be vital in simplifying the control laws of an anti-lock braking system (ABS) and auto-traction system (ATS). A current meter for measuring the speed of a vehicle is to multiply the measured wheel rotation rate to the wheel radius. The approach often includes abrupt unpredictable errors due to slip and skid of wheels and a biased error due to the steady state slip. These errors are sources of difficulty in the implementation of an ABS that is based on the absolute speed of the vehicle. This paper describes an accurate rule-based Kalman filtering technique for estimating the absolute speed of a vehicle. The enhanced accuracy is achieved by employing an additional accelerometer to complement the wheel speed-based speedometer. The accelerometer measures the acceleration of the vehicle in its forward direction and may be corrupted as well by high frequency noise.

This paper describes a new method of measuring the absolute speed of moving objects such as people who are walking or running, running animals, vehicles, sailing boats and the like. The method estimates speed using the time delay between spatial values (patterns) detected by the front and rear sensors which are separately disposed on an object and aligned in the direction of movement. It is known that the electric field intensity of radio waves in the VHF/UHF range exhibit a spatial periodic pattern due to the multi-pass fading phenomenon. It is also known that this phenomenon is a source of noise in automotive telecommunications. In experiments we make use this pattern for speed measurement and investigate if the pattern can be used to provide a spatial value which permits the estimation of the speed of the above mentioned types of objects.