Remote Vehicle Research Articles

Image-Processing-Based Transceiver Design for Acoustic PPM Underwater Links

Underwater pulse position modulation (PPM) transmission uses acoustic pulses since they allow communication, remote control of underwater vehicles, and positioning estimation; the last one when more than one detector is present by using only one technology, that is, the same transmission module. On the other hand, PPM pulses are difficult to detect since they carry information on signal delays, assuring that reliable information delivery both in shallow- and deep-sea channels may be considered a timely challenge due to strong multipath and other interference sources/causes giving rise to signal fluctuation and high noise level. This paper proposes a transceiver architecture characterized by a signal analyzer and an adaptive detection based on the channel features. The signal analysis is based on the Wigner–Ville transform (WVT) that converts a 1-D signal into an image. Edge detection procedures performed on the obtained image so as to discover the interference features and understand the main characteristics of multipath with their adverse effects on detection of pulse position information have been taken into account. Based on this, maximal ratio combining (MRC) and equal gain combining (EGC) for RAKE reception and truncated channel equalization have been considered. Numerical results showing the ability of the proposed transceiver to detect pulses in the presence of multipath and interference generated by external acoustic sources have been carried out also by taking into account the estimation error effects and by comparing the actual performance with ideal cases. Finally, field tests corroborate the reliability of the proposed approach.

Molluscan Species Diversity at North Pacific Hydrothermal Vents: What We Know and What it May Mean*

Hydrothermal vents in the deep sea are harsh, temporally unpredictable habitats with what appears to be a distinct fauna. Decades of subsea research with crewed and remote vehicles have generated a list of known species; is the species list complete? Evidence derived from mollusks sampled at hydrothermal vents on the East Pacific Rise (EPR), and Gorda and Juan de Fuca ridges suggests that the answer is yes. A 2006 compilation of hydrothermal vent species based on decades of research is updated and compared to specimens from these three active ridges in collections of the Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH) that resulted from limited collecting activity. Only three dives at each of the two Gorda Ridge vents collected all named species; 90% of the 20 species known from Juan de Fuca Ridge were collected in nine cruises. At the EPR, only 81% of the 43 known species were collected, but differences among the ridges were not significant. The limited FMNH collections increased the known ranges of six species from Juan de Fuca to Gorda Ridge and of nine species on the EPR. In addition, the EPR appears to host more rare species, potentially due to the frequent temporal changes at these vents. Mollusks currently known from each ridge, with their expanded ranges, are listed; the implications of these results for recent discoveries of slow-spreading vent fields are discussed.

Predictive Compensate Control for Remote Vehicle Steering Assist when the Driver is in Risky Driving States

Remote vehicle steering assist is quite necessary for reducing traffic accidents when the driver is in risky driving states such as fatigue, drunk and so on. Communication such as internet, GPS and GSM is usually applied in this kind of remote control process. During network transmission, data packets were inevitably lost more or less, which has negative influence on the remote steering operation. In order to solve this problem, model of some remote steering system was built so as to analyze the steering quality. A packet dropout compensator was designed and applied from the aspect of predictive compensate control using hybrid pi-sigmoid fuzzy neural network. Simulation results showed that the compensator worked effectively to reduce the bad influence of packet dropout during remote vehicle steering procedure.

Hardware Design of Automotive Parking Heater Remoter and Receiver

In order to achieve 600 meters radio frequency communication and 2-10 meters serial cable communication between remote controller and parking heater, the paper designed the hardware of remote controller and vehicle receivers. Select CC1100 as radio frequency chip, select PIC16F914, ATmega16L as remote control and receiver SPI control chip, select CE8301, LM117 as remote control and receiver power supply module. Finally, the circuit diagram of the receiver and remoter are designed.

Study of a Predictive Compensator for Internet-Based Remote Vehicle Steering Control

Packet loss during network transmission through internet has negative influence on vehicle remote steering operation. Model of the remote steering system was built to analyze the steering quality. On basis of former study, a kind of packet loss compensator was designed from the aspect of predictive compensate control using hybrid pi-sigmoid fuzzy neural network. Simulation results showed that the compensator worked effectively. It was able to reduce the bad influence of packet loss during remote vehicle steering procedure.

Design and Evaluation of Telematics User Interface for Ubiquitous Vehicle

In the ubiquitous computing environment, a ubiquitous vehicle will be a communication node in the vehicular network as well as the means of ground transportation. It will make humans and vehicles seamlessly and remotely connected. Especially, one of the prominent services in the ubiquitous vehicle is the vehicle remote operation. However, mutual-collaboration with the in-vehicle communication network, the vehicle-to-vehicle communication network and the vehicle-to-roadside communication network is required to provide vehicle remote operation services. In this paper, an Internet-based human-vehicle interfaces and a network architecture is presented to provide remote vehicle control and diagnosis services. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated through a design and implementation in terms of the round trip time taken to get a vehicle remote operation service.

Software Design of Automotive Parking Heater Remoter and Receiver

In order to achieve 600 meters radio frequency communication and 2-10 meters serial cable communication between remote controller and parking heater, the paper designed the software of remote controller and vehicle receivers. Using this software process, it can achieve 600 meters wireless radio frequency communication between remoter and receiver, and wired communication 2-10 meters between receiver and ECU, to achieve good control effect.

Adaptive Collaborative Detection for Opportunistic Vehicle Sensor Networks

Transportation is a huge problem that curbs development of societies and economy in many countries nowadays. Participatory sensing technologies encourage people to be involved in environment monitoring through smart devices. Vehicle sensor networks (VSNs) are a novel solution for road event detection with advantages. In this paper, we consider runtime road event detection using VSNs to satisfy the application-specific requirements through collaboration among vehicles. A group road detection scheme (GRD) by using dynamic clustering in VSNs is presented to improve detection performance with low time complexity and message complexity. The simulations with testbed of 5 remote controllable vehicles show that GRD scheme provides effectiveness under different road scenarios.

ANALYSIS OF CAPABILITY OF AIR POLLUTION MONITORING FROM AN UNMANNED AIRCRAFT

Satellite monitoring systems can be used for remote monitoring of the atmosphere over a given area but they do not provide information on the state of pollution at a given time. Additional information could only be obtained after several days. Measurements from an aircraft may be obtained almost at real-time and in different geometries – vertical and horizontal. The future of this type of monitoring is remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles (airplanes, helicopters and balloons tethered), equipped with telemetric monitoring.

Routing protocols in Vehicular Delay Tolerant Networks: A comprehensive survey

This article presents a comprehensive survey of routing protocols proposed for routing in Vehicular Delay Tolerant Networks (VDTN) in vehicular environment. DTNs are utilized in various operational environments, including those subject to disruption and disconnection and those with high-delay, such as Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANET). We focus on a special type of VANET, where the vehicular traffic is sparse and direct end-to-end paths between communicating parties do not always exist. Thus, communication in this context falls into the category of Vehicular Delay Tolerant Network (VDTN). Due to the limited transmission range of an RSU (Road Side Unit), remote vehicles, in VDTN, may not connect to the RSU directly and thus have to rely on intermediate vehicles to relay the packets. During the message relay process, complete end-to-end paths may not exist in highly partitioned VANETs. Therefore, the intermediate vehicles must buffer and forward messages opportunistically. Through buffer, carry and forward, the message can eventually be delivered to the destination even if an end-to-end connection never exists between source and destination. The main objective of routing protocols in DTN is to maximize the probability of delivery to the destination while minimizing the end-to-end delay. Also, vehicular traffic models are important for DTN routing in vehicle networks because the performance of DTN routing protocols is closely related to population and mobility models of the network.

Traversable Ground Surface Segmentation and Modeling for Real-Time Mobile Mapping

Remote vehicle operator must quickly decide on the motion and path. Thus, rapid and intuitive feedback of the real environment is vital for effective control. This paper presents a real-time traversable ground surface segmentation and intuitive representation system for remote operation of mobile robot. Firstly, a terrain model using voxel-based flag map is proposed for incrementally registering large-scale point clouds in real time. Subsequently, a ground segmentation method with Gibbs-Markov random field (Gibbs-MRF) model is applied to detect ground data in the reconstructed terrain. Finally, we generate a texture mesh for ground surface representation by mapping the triangles in the terrain mesh onto the captured video images. To speed up the computation, we program a graphics processing unit (GPU) to implement the proposed system for large-scale datasets in parallel. Our proposed methods were tested in an outdoor environment. The results show that ground data is segmented effectively and the ground surface is represented intuitively.

An In-Vehicle Monitoring System with OBD-Based Vehicle Terminal

An In-Vehicle Monitoring System (IVMS) monitors the location and status of the remote vehicle status. We developed an IVMS with OBD based Vehicle Terminal (VT) instead of traditional one, to reduce installing complexity and gain more useful data from OBD interface. This paper describes the architecture, discusses the different users and their related concerned features. This paper classifies the OBD-VT to 3 classes to fit for different requests. Finally, this paper discusses the development of OBD specification, with an expectation of standardization of more common functions, such as anti-theft features.

Capacity Estimation of the Very Short-Range Electromagnetic Underwater Channel Based on Measurements

The significant attenuation experienced by electromagnetic waves in sea water is the main reason why acoustic waves are generally preferred in underwater communication. Nevertheless, acoustic waves have various drawbacks. For example, they are negatively affected by factors such as mechanical noise, slow propagation speed, and, particularly, low bandwidth, which leads to digital links at a lower bit rate. However, in short-range links, these problems can be overcome by reconsidering the use of electric current communications. For instance, data collected by remote-control vehicles in offshore oil and gas and renewable energy plants can be transmitted at distances of even 1 m or less. This study uses previous frequency response measurements taken in deep water to explore the capacity of a short-range electromagnetic underwater channel. Because of water movement, the nonstatic position of the vehicle when the transmission occurs means that the channel is regarded as randomly time-variant. A statistical model is proposed and the ergodic capacity is calculated for a 7 MHz bandwidth channel at distances ranging from 0.5 m to 5 m as well as for different values of transmitter power. The results of this study reflect capacity values of tens of kbps at distances of approximately 5 m to several Mbps at distances of less than 1.5 m.

Improvements and Implementation of Integrated In-Vehicle Monitoring System

An In-Vehicle Monitoring System (IVMS) monitors the location and status of the remote vehicle status. In this paper, we introduce an integrated IMVS suit for various vehicles types. Based on the state of art IMVS, this system realized some improvements on it. These improvements include report interval, fuel consumption, spotting the target, administrative boundary electronic fence, and big data. These improvements amplify the practicability, expand the use scope and improve the efficiency of IVMS.

Probabilistic Modeling of Anticipation in Human Controllers

This paper presents a methodology for determining whether human operators anticipate future control needs in order to compensate for time delays when controlling remote vehicles. The approach utilizes techniques drawn from the machine learning community in order to learn statistical models of human decision making. Models are fit to an experimental data set generated by remote operations of a robot subjected to time delays between 0 and 2.5 s, using the least angle regression (LARS) and sparse multinomial logistic regression (SMLR) algorithms. These algorithms make use of regularization to reduce the effects of overparameterization due to redundant or noisy environmental features. Models learned by LARS achieve an average prediction rate between 81% and 98%, depending on time delay, while those learned by SMLR achieve average rates between 68% and 86%. A novel metric of feature “importance” is used to evaluate the relative contributions of environmental features to model performance, motivated by the structure of the LARS algorithm. The degree to which human operators rely on anticipation is determined by examining how “importance” scores for features representing different prediction horizons vary with increasing time delay.

Design of a Remote Control Vehicle Based Wireless Communication used for Fighting Fire

Intelligent vehicle get the status information of its body by using sensors. After analyzing data, the vehicle gives the decision results to the driver. In addition, the Smart car also has a good ability to adapt to the environment which can be used in exploration, disaster and other special occasions. An intelligent car was designed to fight forest fire. Wireless remote controlled unmanned forest fire vehicle and remote control PC software was designed. The structure matching and motor coordination of drive the smart car's power and motion control system was studied. By test, it was proved it has have a good stability and reliability.

3D video representation and design for ubiquitous environments

With the fast developments in electronics industry and the amazing growing of the potential customers, multimedia are increasingly ubiquitous: more and more people live in a world of Internet pop-ups and streaming television, mobile phone texting and video clips, MP3 players and pod-casting. Especially, there have been rapid advancements in 3D techniques and technologies. A number of systems have been developed for dynamic 3D reconstruction from multiple view videos over the past decade. Hardware has both improved and become considerably cheaper, making real-time and interactive 3D available to the hobbyist, as well as to the researcher. There have been major studies in such areas as molecular modeling, photogrammetry, flight simulation, CAD, visualization of multidimensional data, medical imaging, tele-operations such as remote vehicle piloting and remote surgery, and stereo lithography. In computer graphics, the improvements in speed, resolution, and economy make interactive stereo an important capability. Old techniques have been improved, and new ones have been developed. True 3D is rapidly becoming an important part of computer graphics, visualization, virtual reality systems, and computer gaming. Numerous 3D systems are granted patents each year, but very few systems move beyond the prototype stage and become commercially viable. Here we treat the salient 3D systems. Therefore, the 3D contents and applications will be the trends of the future multimedia communication. This special issue is intended to provide a forum for presenting, exchanging and discussing the Multimed Tools Appl (2013) 67:1–6 DOI 10.1007/s11042-013-1540-7

Introduction to a Portable Stereo Mapping System for Unmanned Vehicles

This work introduces a Mobile Stereo Mapping System (MSMS) designed for remote operation onboard unmanned vehicles for navigation and rapid collection of 3D spatial data through direct georeferencing and integration of optical and multiple navigation sensors. By avoiding the need for ground control points, the system offers a low-cost mapping solution for both kinematic and static cases, rapid deployments, high data resolutions, and low risk to operators. Position estimation of the camera is based on differential GPS, loosely coupled in a Kalman filter with a low-cost Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) based Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). Attitude is estimated from gyroscope data, aided by accelerometer and magnetometer data to compensate for gyro drift. Two low-cost consumer digital cameras are calibrated and time-synchronized with the GPS/IMU to provide directly georeferenced stereo imagery. The MSMS determines mapping coordinates using photogrammetric solutions modified for direct georeferencing. A calibration process has been developed for the sensor components and the integrated system itself to determine systematic errors and biases, and to determine the relative geometry of the sensors. Object space accuracies (Root Mean Square Error (RMSE)) in the range of 1/100 at camera-to-object distances of about 30m were achieved using wide baseline overlapping images taken from two separate positions of the stereo-metric MSMS. The system design and the calibration and mapping accuracy of the MSMS are presented and assessed using field testing.

The Design and Implementation of the Terminal in a Vehicle Exhaust Real Time Detecting System

This research proposed a real time exhaust measuring system and realized automatic acquisition of exhaust data. In this research, VMT (Vehicle Mounted Terminal) which is integrated with GPRS module, GPS module,exhaust detection unit and microcontroller unit, collected the concentration of CO2, CO and HC and the vehicle location which were then sent to MC (Monitoring Center) via GSM/GPRS net. In this way, both exhaust transient data under daily running and vehicle location are available to environment protection department, which provided a new method to rid high emitting vehicles in urban areas. The system has extensive practical value in vehicle exhaust online detecting, remote vehicles management and environment monitoring.

Experimental study on subsea pipeline bedding condition assessment using wavelet packet transform

Free span along subsea pipelines is a general problem both in pipeline design phase and during operation of pipelines. Traditionally, subsea pipeline system is inspected over the entire pipeline length with inspection tools, such as side-scan sonar and video/camera carried by remote controlled vehicle. The obvious disadvantage is that this kind of inspection can only be carried out at scheduled intervals. In a previous study [1], a damage indicator, WPECR¯, was proposed based on wavelet packet transform analysis to identify free-spanning damage along subsea pipelines. The reliability and efficiency of the proposed damage indicator is proven with numerical simulated vibration data of pipeline under ambient sea wave forces. To further verify the proposed method, in this paper, two scaled pipe models with different boundary conditions were designed and tested subject to random wave forces in a large wave tank. Waterproof accelerometers were used to collect pipeline responses which were subsequently analyzed for pipeline condition monitoring. The results show that using output-only dynamic responses of pipeline subject to random ambient wave excitations can accurately identify free span locations and length. With a vibration based method, real time monitoring of scouring damage to subsea pipelines is achievable so that any free span longer than allowable span length can be detected at an early stage.