On this page we are collected our research on ITS systems for road safety
Co-operative ITS: ESD a Smartphone Based System for Sustainability and Transportation Safety
Co-operative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) are emerging rapidly due to recent development in Global Navigation Satellite System GNSS systems and mobile internet. The main goal of these systems is to improve traffic conditions and safety level on the road networks. With the rapid growth of smartphone technologies and mobile internet, C-ITS based on smartphone may contribute increasingly in vehicle data collection and in traffic safety and sustainability issues.
Driving Behavior and Traffic Safety: An Acceleration-Based Safety Evaluation Procedure for Smartphones
Traffic safety and energy efficiency of vehicles are strictly related to driver’s behavior. The scientific literature has investigated on some specific dynamic parameters that, among the others, can be used as a measure of unsafe or aggressive driving style such as longitudinal and lateral acceleration of vehicle. Moreover, the use of modern mobile devices (smartphones and tablets), and their internal sensors (GPS receivers, three-axes accelerometers), allows road users to receive real time information and feedback that can be useful to increase awareness of drivers and promote safety. This paper focuses on the development of a prototype mobile application that can evaluate the grade of safety that drivers are keeping on the road by measuring of accelerations (longitudinal and lateral) and warning for users when it can be convenient to correct their driving style. The aggressiveness is evaluated by plotting vehicle’s acceleration on a g-g diagram specially studied and designed, where horizontal and lateral acceleration is displayed inside areas of “Good Driving Style”. Several experimental tests were carried out with different drivers and cars in order to estimate the system accuracy and the usability of the application. This work is part of the wider research project M2M, Mobile to Mobility: Information and communication technology systems for road traffic safety (PON National Operational Program for Research and Competitiveness 2007-2013) which is based on the use of mobile sensor computing systems for giving real-time information in order to reduce risks and to make the transportation system more safe and comfortable.
Co-operative ITS: Smartphone based Measurement Systems for Road Safety Assessment
Co-operative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) are attracting a lot of attention, and many resources are devoted to the development of new platforms integrating vehicle-to-vehicle (V2 V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. The main goal of these systems is to improve safety level on the road networks through a new intelligent services available on-board supporting smarter driving. Due to the rapid growth of smartphone technology and smartphone worldwide sales, C-ITS may have a great contribution from its applications in vehicles data collection. Worldwide sales of smartphones totaled 968 million units in 2013, according to Gartner Inc., exceeding annual sales of feature phones for the first time. This study presents a new co-operative systems based on a client/server platform in which client units are GPS-enabled smartphones capable to acquire individual vehicle’s kinematics to be shared on a web server for road operators and users analysis. The cooperative system allows drivers to watch detailed information about their individual driving style and global statistics on their trips. On the other hand, road operators can analyze the whole database to highlight critical points on the network (where unsafe behaviors occur more frequently) and to reward users with safer driving style. This study underscores the usefulness of the smartphone technology for improving C-ITS and assessing potential safety problems.
Estimation of Safety Performance Measures from Smartphone Sensors
Safety performance measures represent an useful tool for evaluating road safety conditions on the basis of objective parameters deducible from the vehicle kinematics. In this context, safety performances are expressed in terms of indicators representing interactions between different pairs of vehicles belonging to the traffic stream. Safety performance is expressed from the perspective of rear-end vehicle interactions. Differences in safety performance are discussed with respect to type of indicator and traffic conditions. When these indicators reach a certain critical value (threshold), a possible accident scenario is identified. Most common approaches used to acquire vehicle tracking data are based on video image processing algorithms and satellite navigation systems. However, many studies are increasingly interested in the emerging smartphone technologies for tracking people, and hence vehicles. Due to the fact that smartphones are becoming a valid alternative to Tablets, PDAs and laptops, offering phone features coupled with multiple mobile internet applications, smartphone sales will more than triple to 491.9 million units by 2012 from 139.3 million in 2008 (Gartner Inc. forecasts). The main goal of this study is to present a procedure for extracting vehicle tracking data from smartphone sensors and to use them in the estimation of safety performance indicators. The accuracy of tracking data from smartphone sensors is evaluated with respect to GPS tracking measurements. The results of this analysis identify interactions potentially dangerous and highlight high risk zones that reflect locations characterized by high vehicular interactions. This study underscores the usefulness of the smartphones for providing meaningful experimental data to assess potential safety problems.