Laser and LIDAR in a System for Visibility Distance Estimation in Fog Conditions.

Razvan-Catalin Miclea,Ciprian Dughir,Florin Sandru,Florin Alexa,Ioan Silea

doi:10.3390/s20216322

Razvan-Catalin Miclea, Ciprian Dughir + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/s20216322

Copy DOI

Abstract

Visibility is a critical factor for transportation, even if we refer to air, water, or ground transportation. The biggest trend in the automotive industry is autonomous driving, the number of autonomous vehicles will increase exponentially, prompting changes in the industry and user segment. Unfortunately, these vehicles still have some drawbacks and one, always in attention and topical, will be treated in this paper—visibility distance issue in bad weather conditions, particularly in fog. The way and the speed with which vehicles will determine objects, obstacles, pedestrians, or traffic signs, especially in bad visibility, will determine how the vehicle will behave. In this paper, a new experimental set up is featured, for analyzing the effect of the fog when the laser and LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) radiation are used in visibility distance estimation on public roads. While using our experimental set up, in the laboratory, the information offered by these measurement systems (laser and LIDAR) are evaluated and compared with results offered by human observers in the same fog conditions. The goal is to validate and unitarily apply the results regarding visibility distance, based on information arrives from different systems that are able to estimate this parameter (in foggy weather conditions). Finally, will be notifying the drivers in case of unexpected situations. It is a combination of stationary and of moving systems. The stationary system will be installed on highways or express roads in areas prone to fog, while the moving systems are, or can be, directly installed on the vehicles (autonomous but also non-autonomous).

Highlights

Researches in the field of visibility started a few decades ago and are still of great interest and high importance
Additional, having in mind the idea of creating a generic system, which can be used as stationary or moving system, we analyzed the link between the results offered by two measurement systems and the human visual acuity, which is affected by the fog
The behavior of the two devices in fog conditions is quite interesting, the telemeter offers correct results until a specific fog density and follows a hard cut when the device displays error in measurement or measures the distance till the fog cloud (10 cm—see Figure 13); on the other hand, the LIDAR is impacted from the first moment when fog is present in the setup but it is still able to perform some measurements in fog and reduces the return measured value while the density of fog particle increases

Summary

Introduction

Researches in the field of visibility started a few decades ago and are still of great interest and high importance. This work focuses on the automotive field and the great importance of visibility on public roads. Statistics confirm that, during the last decades, road traffic injuries are one of the main factors of death worldwide [4], and bad weather conditions, associated with speed are considered one of the major issues [5]. According to the U.S Department of Transportation [5], fog/rain/snow is considered to be in the top five environment-related critical reasons. This issue becomes more important when autonomous vehicles are rolling out on public ways. There are already some examples when the autonomous vehicle failed due to visibility problems: autonomous vehicle developed by Google failed the tests in bad weather conditions [6], while Tesla had, in 2016, the first fatal accident when neither the vehicle system nor the driver observed a truck on the highway [7]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion