A DRIVERLESS VEHICLE DEMONSTRATION ON MOTORWAYS AND IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTS

Jorge Godoy,Jorge Villagrá,Rodolfo Haber,Vicente Milanés,Joshué Pérez,Enrique Onieva

doi:10.3846/16484142.2014.1003406

Abstract

The constant growth of the number of vehicles in today’s world demands improvements in the safety and efficiency of roads and road use. This can be in part satisfied by the implementation of autonomous driving systems because of their greater precision than human drivers in controlling a vehicle. As result, the capacity of the roads would be increased by reducing the spacing between vehicles. Moreover, greener driving modes could be applied so that the fuel consumption, and therefore carbon emissions, would be reduced. This paper presents the results obtained by the AUTOPIA program during a public demonstration performed in June 2012. This driverless experiment consisted of a 100-kilometre route around Madrid (Spain), including both urban and motorway environments. A first vehicle – acting as leader and manually driven – transmitted its relevant information – i.e., position and speed – through an 802.11p communication link to a second vehicle, which tracked the leader’s trajectory and speed while maintaining a safe distance. The results were encouraging, and showed the viability of the AUTOPIA approach.

Highlights

Fully autonomous vehicles are still out of reach of the general public, a start has been made through the inclusion of several driving-aid systems in today’s cars
According to the information provided by Eurostat (Eurostat 2012), it is estimated that the number of passenger cars increased by around 12% from 2001 to 2009 just in the European Union
A trailing vehicle is able to follow the leader trajectory using a combination of fuzzy logic controllers

Summary

Introduction

Fully autonomous vehicles are still out of reach of the general public, a start has been made through the inclusion of several driving-aid systems in today’s cars. The development of these kinds of systems is mainly motivated by the increasing number of vehicles on the roads, which demands improvements in terms of safety and efficiency. In order to achieve this goal it would be necessary to develop control systems with a greater degree of precision than human drivers In this sense, platooning – i.e., forming a group of vehicles traveling closely spaced – is one of the most promising technologies

Objectives

Results

Conclusion