Application of vehicle to another entity (V2X) communications for motorcycle crash avoidance

ABSTRACT

Information and communication technologies are being massively applied in the automotive field as the basis of the new generation of active safety systems. In this extensive field of technologies, vehicular communications will constitute the core of a large set of advanced driving assistance systems for improving road safety as well as helping to reduce the environmental impact of transport. These communication technologies are currently under deployment, but their mandatory installation in newly manufactured cars is foreseen in the next 5 years. This equipment will enable the new Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) system to be installed in these vehicles. Many of these safety applications are currently under development. However, there are some road users who are not commonly included in this vehicular communication ecosystem, specifically, vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. Current assistance systems focused on reducing crashes with this user group are based on sensors installed in the vehicles but do not include vehicular communications. In this article, we present a novel Vulnerable Road User (VRU) warning system based on Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications, which is capable of detecting a motorcycle circulating in the vicinity of the connected vehicles, launching sound and visual warnings, and using a smartphone as human-machine interface. The system has been designed, implemented, and tested in the laboratory as well as on real roads in real traffic flow.

KEYWORDS:

• advanced driver assistance systems
• cooperative systems
• intelligent vehicles
• V2V communications
• vulnerable road users

Funding

This work has received the support of the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (TRA2013-48314-C3-2-R) and the Spanish Directorate General of Traffic (DGT) (SPIP2014-01452).