<title>Measurement of vehicle trajectories using 3D laser radar</title>

Abstract

A measurement system using 3-D imaging laser radars and real-time image processing to quantitatively measure and characterize inter-vehicular motion (i.e., the vehicle motion environment, VME) in real-world traffic settings is being developed by the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM) under a subcontract with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), who has a cooperative agreement with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The system will be deployed at the roadside to acquire data on vehicle centroid and heading trajectories that will be used to study vehicle dynamics and accident causation. This effort is a direct response to the recognized need for a fundamental understanding of the vehicle motion environment to aid in the development of automotive active safety technologies for Intelligent Vehicle Highway System (IVHS) applications. This paper presents overviews of the national initiative for crash avoidance research, the role of the VME Program and the vehicle motion environment measurement system (i.e., VME-MS). Simulation studies were conducted in support of the image and data processing algorithm development. The motivation for and the implementation, capabilities and results of these simulation studies are presented.