Situation awareness system for automobiles

People die in road accidents every day. Most of the accidents occur due to distraction and loss of awareness about the environment during driving. Although several safety features are being introduced in vehicles, but they are not sufficient to meet the safety requirements. We propose a system for k

Project Title

Situation awareness system for automobiles

Project Area of Specialization

Mechatronics Engineering

Project Summary

People die in road accidents every day. Most of the accidents occur due to distraction and loss of awareness about the environment during driving. Although several safety features are being introduced in vehicles, but they are not sufficient to meet the safety requirements. We propose a system for keeping the drivers aware of his/her surroundings. The system utilizes machine vision to detect different environmental scenarios like lane departure and obstacles. A tactile feedback rendered on the steering through vibration motors. To convey the information of the environment, we used tactile feedback displaced on the steering wheel.  An IP camera and a radio receiver would be placed on the UGV. The data from camera to PC is transferred wirelessly. The lane detection would be done through OpenCV. When the UGV would drift from the road, a haptic sensation on the steering would be produced. Thus, in this way a vibratory sense is produced at the steering to alert the driver that the vehicle is leaving its track if he is not looking at the road, or busy in doing something else. In this way haptics feedback
and image processing can be used to aware the driver of the situation. In order to control the speed of the vehicle motors, encoders would be placed alongside of steering. Thus, in this way, the chances of accidents can be controlled greatly and the lives of people can be saved.

Project Objectives

The objectives of the project are the following:

• To make a situation awareness system for automobiles
• To increase the safety factor for vehicles
• Introduction of haptics feedback system in automobiles
• Develop a combined application of machine vision and haptics feedback to assist drivers while driving.

Project Implementation Method

The Methodology section consists of two parts:
1.  Software
2.  Hardware
  Software:  
The software part consists of lane detection and motor actuation. For lane detection, we are using OpenCV. For Motor actuation, Arduino microcontroller is used.
OpenCV:
OpenCV  (Open Source Computer Vision Library) is an open-source computer vision and machine-learning software library. OpenCV was built to provide a common infrastructure for computer vision applications and to accelerate the use of machine perception in the commercial products.
Lane Detection(Still image):
There are following main parts in lane detection:
•  Load an image
•  Define region of interest
•  Canny edge detection
•  Draw lines using Hough Transformation.
Lane Detection(Video):
The video detection also has the same steps as image detection, only difference is that instead of a still image, the algorithm is applied to the continuous loop of frames.

  Hardware
We are going to apply following technique to carry out ours project. An IP camera and a radio receiver are being placed on the UGV. The camera is continuously monitoring the surrounding and sending data to the PC.  The data from camera to PC is transferred wirelessly. The process of lane detection would be done in the PC through OpenCV platform. As far as the vehicle is in the desired path/lane no signal would be generated. But as soon as the vehicle starts to drift from the required lane the PC will transfer a signal  to Arduino. This is because of image processing. Since when the data coming from the camera would not match with the desired data a warning signal would be produced. As soon as Arduino will receive signal from the PC, it will generate haptics stimulations on the steering through sensory/vibration motors that are being attached with the steering. Thus, in this way a vibratory sense is produced at the steering to alert the driver that the vehicle is leaving its track if he is not looking at the road, or busy in doing something else. In this way haptics feedback and image processing can be used to aware the driver of situation. Now encoders would be attached alongside of steering wheel. The encoders will calculate the rotation of steering or in other words drift of the vehicle ? from the lane. The encoders will calculate pulses and send these pulses to Arduino. The Arduino then set a speed ratio factor for both the motors of UGV to control the speed and get the vehicle back to track.

Benefits of the Project

The benefits that we are expecting from our project are as follows:

•  Increasing safety factor in automobiles
•  Obtain haptics feedback on a car steering
•  Detection of road lanes to aware the driver to the situation of the road while driving.
• production of a combined application of image processing and haptics feedback.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

 The final deliverable would be a situation awareness system

It would consist of two parts:

• An unmanned ground vehicle behaving like a car/vehicle with an IP camera attached to it.
• and a steering wheel to control the vehicle, on which a haptics sensation would be generated as a result of road lane departure. 

Final Deliverable of the Project

Hardware System

Core Industry

Others

Other Industries

Transportation

Core Technology

Artificial Intelligence(AI)

Other Technologies

Robotics, Others

Sustainable Development Goals

Good Health and Well-Being for People, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Life on Land, Partnerships to achieve the Goal

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com