Levent Guvenc

Levent Guvenc, Bilin Aksun-Guvenc, Xinchen Li et al.

This report presents a simulation environment for pre-deployment testing of the autonomous shuttles that will operate in the Linden Residential Area. An autonomous shuttle deployment was already successfully launched and operated in the city of Columbus and ended recently. This report focuses on the second autonomous shuttle deployment planned to start in December, 2019, using a route that will help to solve first-mile / last-mile mobility challenges in the Linden neighborhood of Columbus by providing free rides between St. Stephens Community House, Douglas Community Recreation Center, Rosewind Resident Council and Linden Transit Center. This document presents simulation testing environments in two open source simulators and a commercial simulator for this residential area route and how they can be used for model-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop simulation testing of autonomous shuttle operation before the actual deployment.

Xincheng Cao, Haochong Chen, Bilin Aksun-Guvenc et al.

Reverse parking maneuvering of a vehicle with trailer system is a difficult task to complete for human drivers due to the multi-body nature of the system and the unintuitive controls required to orientate the trailer properly. The problem is complicated with the presence of other vehicles that the trailer and its connected vehicle must avoid during the reverse parking maneuver. While path planning methods in reverse motion for vehicles with trailers exist, there is a lack of results that also offer collision avoidance as part of the algorithm. This paper hence proposes a modified Hybrid A*-based algorithm that can accommodate the vehicle-trailer system as well as collision avoidance considerations with the other vehicles and obstacles in the parking environment. One of the novelties of this proposed approach is its adaptability to the vehicle with trailer system, where limits of usable steering input that prevent the occurrence of jackknife incidents vary with respect to system configuration. The other contribution is the addition of the collision avoidance functionality which the standard Hybrid A* algorithm lacks. The method is developed and presented first, followed by simulation case studies to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach.

Ozgenur Kavas-Torris, Sukru Yaren Gelbal, Mustafa Ridvan Cantas et al.

Connectivity between ground vehicles can be utilized and expanded to include aerial vehicles for coordinated missions. Using Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication technologies, a communication link can be established between Connected and Autonomous vehicles (CAVs) and Unmanned Aerial vehicles (UAVs). Hardware implementation and testing of a ground to air communication link is crucial for real-life applications. Two different communication links were established, Dedicated Short Range communication (DSRC) and 4G internet based WebSocket communication. Both links were tested separately both for stationary and dynamic test cases. One step further, both links were used together for a real-life use case scenario called Quick Clear demonstration. The aim was to first send ground vehicle location information from the CAV to the UAV through DSRC communication. On the UAV side, the connection between the DSRC modem and Raspberry Pi companion computer was established through User Datagram Protocol (UDP) to get the CAV location information to the companion computer. Raspberry Pi handles 2 different connection, it first connects to a traffic contingency management system (CMP) through Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) to send CAV and UAV location information to the CMP. Secondly, Raspberry Pi uses a WebSocket communication to connect to a web server to send photos taken by an on-board camera the UAV has. Quick Clear demo was conducted both for stationary test and dynamic flight tests. The results show that this communication structure can be utilized for real-life scenarios.

Sukru Yaren Gelbal, Mustafa Ridvan Cantas, Bilin Aksun-Guvenc et al.

The novel Corona virus pandemic is one of the biggest worldwide problems right now. While hygiene and wearing masks make up a large portion of the currently suggested precautions by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO), social distancing is another and arguably the most important precaution that would protect people since the airborne virus is easily transmitted through the air. Social distancing while walking outside, can be more effective, if pedestrians know locations of each other and even better if they know locations of people who are possible carriers. With this information, they can change their routes depending on the people walking nearby or they can stay away from areas that contain or have recently contained crowds. This paper presents a mobile device application that would be a very beneficial tool for social distancing during Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). The application works, synced close to real-time, in a networking fashion with all users obtaining their locations and drawing a virtual safety bubble around them. These safety bubbles are used with the constant velocity pedestrian model to predict possible future social distancing violations and warn the user with sound and vibration. Moreover, it takes into account the virus staying airborne for a certain time, hence, creating time-decaying non-safe areas in the past trajectories of the users. The mobile app generates collision free paths for navigating around the undesired locations for the pedestrian mode of transportation when used as part of a multi-modal trip planning app. Results are applicable to other modes of transportation also. Features and the methods used for implementation are discussed in the paper. The application is tested using previously collected real pedestrian walking data in a realistic environment.

Mustafa Ridvan Cantas, Arpita Chand, Hao Zhang et al.

The connectivity between vehicles, infrastructure, and other traffic participants brings a new dimension to automotive safety applications. Soon all the newly produced cars will have Vehicle to Everything (V2X) communication modems alongside the existing Advanced Driver Assistant Systems (ADAS). It is essential to identify the different sensor measurements for the same targets (Data Association) to use connectivity reliably as a safety feature alongside the standard ADAS functionality. Considering the camera is the most common sensor available for ADAS systems, in this paper, we present an experimental implementation of a Mahalanobis distance-based data association algorithm between the camera and the Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communication sensors. The implemented algorithm has low computational complexity and the capability of running in real-time. One can use the presented algorithm for sensor fusion algorithms or higher-level decision-making applications in ADAS modules.

Sukru Yaren Gelbal, Bilin Aksun-Guvenc, Levent Guvenc

The final project report for the SmartShuttle sub-project of the Ohio State University is presented in this report. This has been a two year project where the unified, scalable and replicable automated driving architecture introduced by the Automated Driving Lab of the Ohio State University has been further developed, replicated in different vehicles and scaled between different vehicle sizes. A limited scale demonstration was also conducted during the first year of the project. The architecture used was further developed in the second project year including parameter space based low level controller design, perception methods and data collection. Perception sensor and other relevant vehicle data were collected in the second project year. Our approach changed to using soft AVs in a hardware-in-the-loop simulation environment for proof-of-concept testing. Our second year work also had a change of localization from GPS and lidar based SLAM to GPS and map matching using a previously constructed lidar map in a geo-fenced area. An example lidar map was also created. Perception sensor and other collected data and an example lidar map are shared as datasets as further outcomes of the project.

Burak Demirel, Levent Guvenc

A parameter space procedure for designing chosen parameters of a repetitive controller to satisfy a robust performance criterion is presented. Using this method, low order robust repetitive controllers can be designed and implemented for plants that possibly include time delay, poles on the imaginary axis and discontinuous weights. A design and simulation study based on a high speed atomic force microscope position control example is utilized to illustrate the method presented in this paper.