The Nexyad Automotive & Transportation Newsletter #6 is available!
Summary :
– SafetyNex & EcoGyzer : the Driver Behaviour Signature
– Nexyad ADAS Validation Database still in progress
– ProgressRoadNex v2.2 Robustness demonstration
– Nexyad in Media
Comparison of the four Driver Behaviour Signatures
Read more Here https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/?cat=501
SafetyNex by NEXYAD and EcoGyzer by NOMADIC SOLUTIONS together to estimate the Driver Behaviour Signature.
We ask an experimented driver to drive the same path four times with a different behaviour.
Here we show the Sportive-Safe Driver :
The Sportive-Safe Driver is not Eco, but he is safe most of the time. Despite, he accelerates strongly, he slows down when he arrives to intersections and pedestrian pathways. He has only four points in the red area of the signature mapping to compare with the Quiet-Dangerous Driver seen in an earlier news
Summary :
– SafetyNex & EcoGyzer : the Driver Behaviour Signature
– Nexyad ADAS Validation Database still in progress
– ProgressRoadNex v2.2 Robustness demonstration
SafetyNex is a Nexyad Module for ADAS that estimates the risk (or safety) in driving 100% correlated with accidentology. It is unique and disruptive in the whole world of Road Safety.
Recently, EcoGyzer a tool by the french company Nomadic Solutions, has been integrated to SafetyNex to estimate the Eco driving.
Now we are proud to announce that SafetyNex & EcoGyzer as a world premiere App estimating the Driver Behaviour Signature. To figure the Driver Behavour Signature, we imagined a special mapping as you’ll see on the demo films.
Every second in driving, one point is plotted on the mapping. The more right a point is, the more Eco is the driving; the more up, the more safe it is. At the end of the path, there is a cloud of points called the Driver Behaviour Signature.
In the following demo films, we show four different driving behaviour signatures for the same path :
The Good Driver
The Bad Driver
The Quiet-Dangerous Driver
The Sportive-Safe Driver
Comparison of the four Driver Behaviour Signatures
NEXYAD has been starting the development of a data base for artificial vision-based ADAS test and validation.
This data base will be relevant and unique because it is fully decribed in two ways :
. reality : position of road and obstacles
. driving situation (i.e. curve in a foggy weather with pedestrian crossing, …) using the methology AGENDA.
To read more :
– « Methodology for ADAS validation: Potential Contribution of other Scientific Fields which have already answered the Same Questions »,
G. Yahiaoui, P. Da Silva Dias, proceedings of the 3rd CESA Automotive Electronics Congress May 2014 Paris, Lecture Notes in Mobility,
ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND AUTONOMOUS DRIVING, Jochen Langheim Ed, Springer, pp 133-138.
– « Validation of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems », G. Yahiaoui, N. du Lac, SafetyWeek congress, Aschaffenburg, May 2015.
Business details :
A part of this data base will be soon available for free on the internet, to the worldwide ADAS and Autonomous
vehicle community (labos and firms).
If you wish to receive the link as soon as it is available, click HERE and fill the registration form.
(Free access to the NEXYAD Artificial Vision-based ADAS Validation Database)
The complete data base should be available soon through an annual membership.
For more information : contact NEXYAD Olivier BENEL +33 139 04 13 60
On a new release v2.2 of RoadNex, we’ve added an arrow that shows the direction to be followed by the vehicle according to our road detection always defined by the edges of the rollable track and the surface of the rollable track. New tests were performed on videos of different types of roads, including tracks in the desert or lit roads by car lights at night.
These examples demonstrate the robustness of our module software that is more and more a reel competitor of lanes Detection System developed by Mobileye.
See some demos below or click on images.
To see all the demo films about RoadNex, go to the Nexyad Channel in YouTube :
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9eYKvsuJMepuc42nM16f1A
https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Article-CCFA.png
To read more :
https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Article-Cleo.png
To read more :
SafetyNex by NEXYAD and EcoGyzer by NOMADIC SOLUTIONS together to estimate the Driver Behaviour Signature.
We ask an experimented driver to drive the same path four times with a different behaviour.
Here we show the Quiet-Dangerous Driver :
The Quiet-Dangerous Driver is always Eco, he doesn’t accelerate too hard and he doesn’t brake strongly, but he passes through intersections and pedestrian pathways without slowing down… He is potentialy Dangerous.
SafetyNex by NEXYAD and EcoGyzer by NOMADIC SOLUTIONS together to estimate the Driver Behaviour Signature.
We ask an experimented driver to drive the same path four times with a different behaviour.
Here we show the Bad Driver :
Le Comité des Constructeurs Français d’Automobiles CCFA a repris LES ECHOS
à la Une de son site internet :
“Le smartphone peut-il améliorer la sécurité au volant ?”
Lire l’article ici
Summary :
– OVERVIEW OF ITS WORLD CONGRESS IN BORDEAUX
– USING NEXYAD ADAS MODULES FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE AND SAFETY/RISK ESTIMATION
– REAL TIME ONBOARD RISK ESTIMATION CORRELATED WITH ROAD ACCIDENT
NEXYAD has been starting the development of a data base for artificial vision-based ADAS test and validation.
This data base will be relevant and unique because it is fully decribed in two ways :
. reality : position of road and obstacles
. driving situation (i.e. curve in a foggy weather with pedestrian crossing, …) using the methology AGENDA.
To read more :
– « Methodology for ADAS validation: Potential Contribution of other Scientific Fields which have already answered the Same Questions »,
G. Yahiaoui, P. Da Silva Dias, proceedings of the 3rd CESA Automotive Electronics Congress May 2014 Paris, Lecture Notes in Mobility,
ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND AUTONOMOUS DRIVING, Jochen Langheim Ed, Springer, pp 133-138.
– « Validation of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems », G. Yahiaoui, N. du Lac, SafetyWeek congress, Aschaffenburg, May 2015.
Business details :
A part of this data base will be soon available for free on the internet, to the worldwide ADAS and Autonomous
vehicle community (labos and firms).
If you wish to receive the link as soon as it is available, click HERE and fill the registration form.
(Free access to the NEXYAD Artificial Vision-based ADAS Validation Database)
The complete data base should be available soon through an annual membership.
For more information : contact NEXYAD Olivier BENEL +33 139 04 13 60
From 5 to 9 October, the ITS World Congress held in Bordeaux.
It is the world’s largest gathering on the subject of intelligent transport systems and numerous corporations and government agencies were present to discuss new technologies, communication and robotics which every day are revolutionizing commercial road transport, individual and collective.
From our point of view, three main domains distinguished themselves which are however increasingly closely intertwined: the vehicle, the infrastructure and information.
The most spectacular of them represented by the many autonomous vehicles that lined the stands or went in demo mode near the fairgrounds.
We noted a trend of convergence between the connected vehicle on one hand and adas in the other hand, all autonomous vehicles were also connected vehicles and communicating vehicles : car to x and x to car (especially radio link with fires and road signs.)
The AKKA link in city car without driver of the French IT company has rolled around the lake so the city. This electric car is the result of a call for projects from the agency for the development and innovation of the Aquitaine region and it uses open data from the city of Bordeaux and its neighbourhoods.
From Renault, we saw the Next Two a piloted car remotely by a tablet. It parked all alone with no one behind the wheel. We liked particulary that this functionality avoids a walking pedestrian crossing in front of the car. Then it returns to the starting point when you recall it, always from the tablet.
Moveo-Groupement ADAS is a cluster of 8 french SME’s that put their competence in common to develop autonomous car. They showed on their booth the demo car that has been made for ENSIAME University of Valenciennes, entirely robotised by FH Electronics. Nexyad designed the eyes of this car with his vision-based road detection system RoadNex that runs on the framework RT-Maps from Intempora. The other companies showed demos, products, and competence on detection, pattern recognition, eco-driving measurement, human factors, advanced engineering for autonomous cars.
PSA Peugeot Citröen showed on its stand several R & D results in progress (for example, a work in collaboration with Nexyad : a plateform for simulation Car Easy Apps or CASA) Several autonomous vehicles rolled in urban circuit.
VeDeCoM presented four autonomous vehicles driving around the lake near the Congress place on a 7km open track. These demonstrators, which are dual-mode vehicles (manual driving and driving delegation level 4), combine the French expertise, derived from the public-private partnership research on the autonomous vehicle. We appreciated a lot the capacity of those demo cars to pass all the difficulties of the city, including roundabouts with traffic which are one of the key problems of the automated driving.
Smartlane opens up your data silos and allows you to create a secure, accessible and integrated data hub. In this way your own data are carefully combined with external sources in order to provide comprehensive information value.
Valeo came also with an autonomous vehicle in demo on the road of Bordeaux : the Valeo Cruiser4U fitted with the valeo laser scanner and the valeo camera that uses Mobileye processor. This car was designed to scale in urban and suburban driving, it can change lane, reaching 130km/h.
Nexyad was present on two booth at ITS. « Moveo Groupement ADAS » one showing innovative technologies of perception with a suite of software modules RoadNex, single camera based detection of sides of the road and detection of the surface of the road ; ObstaNex, single camera based detection of obstacles on the road and on the sides of the road ; VisiNex onboard, camera based measurement of the visibility ; and SafetyNex, a world unique tool to estimate the risk/safe in driving 100% correlated with accidentology. Nexyad was also present on the PSA Peugeot Citröen booth with the FUI, Moveo labelised, research program CASA.
Citilog showed his incidents detection system on motorways, and management of intersections in cities based on proprietary camera technology. Citilog was on Moveo Groupement ITS Infra booth with other SME’s.
ST Microelectronics showcased next generation technologies for automotive applications, with a range of solutions including telematics, positioning, ADAS, digital radio, and sensors. We discovered his partner AutoTalks the pioneer and leader of the V2X Technology.
TomTom makes his navigation more and more precise and efficient. They have fully mapped in 3D the roads of Germany to render, in the future, automated driving possible, and they will do the rest of Europe before the world, they say.
Navya is an electric shuttle 100% French without driver that moves at low speed through an embedded robot and multi-sensor system. Designed for urban mobility, first for closed sites and latter for the first or the last kilometer of a journey, it can accommodate up to twenty passengers safely. Demo on a course in the city of Bordeaux.
Atlatec makes ground reality which is very valuable for validation of ADAS. Put their box in your car, calibrate it and run. Then it stores a mass of data and the software creates automatically high precision 3D maps of the environment with high resolution top view of the road.
Here presented high definition maps combined with cloud technology. The leader of navigation brings to the driver, real-time location experiences through of a broad range of connected devices from smartphones, tablets to wearables and vehicles; and always more informations like road surface horizon (slope/cant track).
On the ITS World Congress we could feel very clearly that car manufacturers, Tier One and Tier Two Companies, stakeholders in mobility, in general, (including many SMEs) have heavily invested on ADAS and autonomous vehicles. It leads to a multitude of very advanced exhibitions, and present or future availability of high performance sensors at low costs, with associated signal processing, which are also mature.
Nexyad tries Autonomous Vehicle by VeDeCom at ITS World in Bordeaux
by NEXYAD
INTRODUCTION
The company NEXYAD developped software modules for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems :
. RoadNex (Road detection) : lane detection, detection of the borderlines of drivable area in the lane, detection of the surface of drivable area in the lane.
Sensor : camera (color)
. ObstaNex (Obstacles detection) : obstacles detection (if they have a vertical dimension or – inclusive – if they have their own movement)
Sensor : camera (N&B or color), accel, gyro
. VisiNex onboard (weather visibility measurement) : visibility measurement (quality and distance)
Sensor : camera
. SafetyNex : onboard road safety / risk estimation
Sensor : navigation map, gps, accel or car speed
Those modules were made to develop very efficient ADAS.
There are many ways of comining those modules, depending on the function that should be developped.
LANE KEEPING AND AUTOMATIC BRAKING : FOR CAR MANUFACTURERS AND TIER ONE COMPANIES
For this function, modules may be integrated in a rather complex way :
Such an application needs to know where it works and where it doesn’t work (reliability). For that, VisiNex helps because it measures weather visibility and the nit is possible to know in which context artificial vision algorithms are efficient or not. It is also possible to switch setting parameters of artificial vision based algorithms using visibility characteristics, in order to expand the range of good performance of the global system (this is robustness).
NEXYAD applies a validation methodology called AGENDA (see papers in CESA Automotive 2014 in Paris and in SATETYWEEK 2015 in Aschaffenburg). This methodology is the onlt approach that allows to know what the system is supposed to do in a functional point of view, with measurable characterisctics of road scenes.
NEXYAD of course uses the NEXYAD ADAS validation data base : a part of this validation data base for artificial vision-based ADAS will be soon online for free (usable by every researcher or engineer in the world).
Note : the AGENDA methodology also provides a method to measure the similarity of a road scene in the validation data base anda current road scene : this is applied to estimate a confidence score.
SAFETY / RISK ESTIMATION FOR INSURANCE COMPANIES
SafetyNex measures the adequation of driving to road infrastructure characteristics.
It generates then a risk if the driver goes too fast when approaching a crossing road or a dangerous curve.
Of course, a poor visibility should lead the driver to drive slower.
In addition, there could be auxiliary inputs that would tell SafetyNex if there are obstacles on the pathway :
This scheme is the same than the previous one but the outputs of RoadNex and ObstaNex are used INSIDE the scheme (they don’t provide an output of the global scheme).
DEMOS OF NEXYAD MODULES
REFERENCES
Validation of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems by Gérard Yahiaoui & Nicolas Du Lac
CESA Paper by Gérard Yahiaoui & Pierre Da Silva Dias
Road detection for ADAS and autonomous vehicle
Using the NEXYAD road detection (RoadNex) to make obstacles detection more robust
Real Time Onboard Risk Estimation Correlated with Road Accident
Visibility Measurement for ADAS and Autonomous Vehicle
by NEXYAD
INTRODUCTION
Measuring road safety in the context experienced by the driver is a topic of interest for several activities :
. car manufacturers, who can inform the driver of potential dangers
. autonomous vehicle developers who need to prove that the driving actually minimizes risk of accident.
. fleet managers and insurance companies who wish to measure the risk taken by drivers (how they drive)
. managers of road infrastructure that alway change infrastructure to adapt and lower the risk of accident
The company NEXYAD has been developing since 2001 an embedded onboard module, SafetyNex, to
estimate in real time the risk of accident.
PRECONCEIVED IDEAS ABOUT ROAD ACCIDENTS AND DRIVING STYLE
Many trials have been completed or in progress, particularly by insurance companies and fleet managers,
In order to measure what is called the “driving style”.
The assumption is that some drivers are more “nervous” than others, and that this has an impact on the accident: those that speed up or slow down quite often brutally would be “bad drivers” while those with a quieter driving style would be “good” drivers.
This assumption is contradicted by the facts. There is no statistical connection between the driving style and
the accident.
Formally, one can easily fancy very well that if a driver operates very quietly, without slowing, without
accelerating at 30 km / h, and if this driver passes through a stop road sign without braking … then the driving style is quiet but very accident-prone.
We then see that beyond the possible statistical link (that doesn’t exist), there can be no relationship of cause and effect.
All experiments that were conducted led to this result.
All those that will be conducted, based on more or less intelligent thresholding of the acceleration values are doomed to failure.
Do not confuse eco-driving and safe driving.
Driving style cannot be interpreted itself without context description :
. infrastructure shape and characteristic, on which the vehicle is traveling
. traffic (presence of other road users)
. weather conditions (visibility, grip, …)
. level of driver vigilance (distraction, drowsiness, sleep …)
NEXYAD has developed a scalable solution capable of taking into account all these factors.
SafetyNex is therefore able to estimate the risk of driving using all those variables.
Version 2.1 of SafetyNex, under deployment, takes into account the adequacy of driving style with the type and shape of infrastructure (breaks on route characteristics, turns, pedestrian crossings, intersections …).
This version has been intentionally reduced to « driving style vs infratructure characteristics », because it already gives a 90% correlation with accident and because this version is deployable at very low cost:
. on smart phone
. electronic device (developed by an automotive tier one company), without using the OBD socket)
CORRELATION OF RISK OF ACCIDENT ESTIMATED BY SafetyNex V2.1 AND ACCIDENT
NEXYAD participated in collaborative research programs since 2001, and worked then with experts from the road equipment.
In particular, SARI research program led to detecting what experts call “Break on the route characteristics”. For example, a turn with a big curve may be a danger when it arrives behind a long straight line, while the same curve will not be dangerous bend on a mountain road.
NEXYAD published a paper at the conference on road safety May 6, 2010 in Paris: PRAC 2010
Risk Prevention and Save The Conduct, Session 1 Characterization of road risk vs. infrastructure
« Evaluation du risque routier pour l’aide à la conduite ou le diagnostic de l’infrastructure », Johann Brunet, Pierre Da Silva Dias, Gérard Yahiaoui, PRAC 2010, Mai 2010, Paris.
The work that led to this publication were integrated in the available product SafetyNex. This means that by construction, the risk estimated by SafetyNex is correlated to the accident. This is true by construction, and NEXYAD conducted tests on roads, downtown, on motorways in urban areas, etc … and was able to validate this result.
PRINCIPLE OF SafetyNex V2.1
SafetyNet is a knowledge based system (expert system) which applies rules of the experts of the equipment.
These rules are stored in a rules data base in a mathematical form that can adapt to gradual actual characteristics of the infrastructure.
Required inputs are :
. the navigation map and the GPS: To examine the shape and type of the infrastructure located downstream of the vehicle (turns with their radius of curvature, points of interest like pedestrian crossing, crossroads, etc …)
. the instantaneous vehicle speed
From these two inputs, SafetyNex evaluates, by applying the rules, the adequacy of the driving speed of the vehicle to difficulty and danger of infrastructure.
A sporty driver accelerating hard, braking hard, but passing dangerous places at low speed will be scored with a low risk.
A quiet driver that passes through a stop road sing at 30 km / h without braking will be scored with a high risk.
A brutal braking cannot be considered as « bad driving » if it is necessary to avoid an accident …
We see then, that SafetyNex risk estimation is not correlated with the absolute value of acceleration, but with ACTUAL speed adaptation to difficulty and danger of the infrastructure, in real time.
Additional inputs (optional) are already scheduled, and can afford to modulate the estimated risk to increase acuracy of SafetyNex :
. grip (if one has a sensor to connect to the input provided for the purpose of SafetyNex)
. weather report (if one has the temporal and spatial information)
. atmospheric visibility (if one has adequate measure: example: a camera and the measuring module of atmospheric visibility : VisiNex)
. distance to potential obstacles (if it has an adequate sensor : eg radar, lidar, or camera with RoadNex ObstaNex modules)
. a driver distraction factor (if the driver is observed with a camera and / or if one monitors the activity of mobile phone, etc …)
All these additional inputs are already ready to be used by SafetyNex but of course, they increase the cost of deployment, involving sensors (camera, …) and additional computing power before getting in SafetyNex to process signals and images from the optional sensors.
Using SafetyNex V2.1 with only the required inputs already allows a very high correlation of the estimated risk with the accident. We recommend to implement this version, already infinitely more effective than any other onboard measurements.
The interest of SafetyNex is that the future is already assured: Moore’s Law by rapidly lowering the cost of electronics and embedded computing, SafetyNex is ready to process the additional inputs, when users want to integrate cameras and sensors.
TYPICAL USES OF SafetyNet V2.1
. Insurance Companies:
– Pay how you drive
– Predictive modeling of bonus malus: the same accident under the same conditions does not lead to the same conclusions based on accumulated historical and recording the last seconds risk SafetyNex
– Generation of a dumb risk variable, correlated to the accident, to help actuaries refine pricing (big data)
. Fleet managers
. Automotive equipment suppliers:
– Alarm on risk
– Intelligent Navigation able to advise the driver
. Engineers and researchers from autonomous vehicle:
– Driving Quality Assessment generated by the robot
CONCLUSION
Embedded estimation of road risk of accident is now a problem completely solved by a product available for deployment, SafetyNex.
SafetyNex is deployable at Low cost on:
. mobile phones
. electronic device of a Automotive Tier 1 supplier (without plugging the OBD).
And SafetyNex already planned to integrate (once the cost is acceptable) grip sensors and cameras (for example) to estimate traffic and atmospheric visibility, as well as information such as weather and driver distraction.
All of these are already processed by SafetyNex rules based system, so that the tool can quickly evoluate with each decrease in the cost of sensor elements and cost of computing power needed to compute sensors outputs.
“when the smartphone becomes a lookout driver”
“Autonomous car is a dream the French Automotive sector”
NEXYAD was compared to Mobileye and considered as a serious player in the competition.
In french magazine Le Journal de l’Automobile, pp 52-54, 18 Sept 2015
« MobilEye a de la concurrence : longtemps en position monopolistique, la société israélienne a désormais un
concurrent qui s’annonce sérieux dans le domaine des algorithmes de gestion des caméras embarquées, Nexyad.
Rencontre avec les ingénieurs français qui pourraient changer la donne »
USING NEXYAD ADAS MODULES FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE AND SAFETY/RISK ESTIMATION
by NEXYAD
INTRODUCTION
The company NEXYAD developped software modules for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems :
. RoadNex (Road detection) : lane detection, detection of the borderlines of drivable area in the lane, detection of the surface of drivable area in the lane.
Sensor : camera (color)
. ObstaNex (Obstacles detection) : obstacles detection (if they have a vertical dimension or – inclusive – if they have their own movement)
Sensor : camera (N&B or color), accel, gyro
. VisiNex onboard (weather visibility measurement) : visibility measurement (quality and distance)
Sensor : camera
. SafetyNex : onboard road safety / risk estimation
Sensor : navigation map, gps, accel or car speed
Those modules were made to develop very efficient ADAS.
There are many ways of comining those modules, depending on the function that should be developped.
LANE KEEPING AND AUTOMATIC BRAKING : FOR CAR MANUFACTURERS AND TIER ONE COMPANIES
For this function, modules may be integrated in a rather complex way :
Such an application needs to know where it works and where it doesn’t work (reliability). For that, VisiNex helps because it measures weather visibility and the nit is possible to know in which context artificial vision algorithms are efficient or not. It is also possible to switch setting parameters of artificial vision based algorithms using visibility characteristics, in order to expand the range of good performance of the global system (this is robustness).
NEXYAD applies a validation methodology called AGENDA (see papers in CESA Automotive 2014 in Paris and in SATETYWEEK 2015 in Aschaffenburg). This methodology is the onlt approach that allows to know what the system is supposed to do in a functional point of view, with measurable characterisctics of road scenes.
NEXYAD of course uses the NEXYAD ADAS validation data base : a part of this validation data base for artificial vision-based ADAS will be soon online for free (usable by every researcher or engineer in the world).
Note : the AGENDA methodology also provides a method to measure the similarity of a road scene in the validation data base anda current road scene : this is applied to estimate a confidence score.
SAFETY / RISK ESTIMATION FOR INSURANCE COMPANIES
SafetyNex measures the adequation of driving to road infrastructure characteristics.
It generates then a risk if the driver goes too fast when approaching a crossing road or a dangerous curve.
Of course, a poor visibility should lead the driver to drive slower.
In addition, there could be auxiliary inputs that would tell SafetyNex if there are obstacles on the pathway :
This scheme is the same than the previous one but the outputs of RoadNex and ObstaNex are used INSIDE the scheme (they don’t provide an output of the global scheme).
DEMOS OF NEXYAD MODULES
REFERENCES
Validation of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems by Gérard Yahiaoui & Nicolas Du Lac
CESA Paper by Gérard Yahiaoui & Pierre Da Silva Dias
Road detection for ADAS and autonomous vehicle
Using the NEXYAD road detection (RoadNex) to make obstacles detection more robust
Real Time Onboard Risk Estimation Correlated with Road Accident
Visibility Measurement for ADAS and Autonomous Vehicle
ESTIMATION EMBARQUEE DU RISQUE ROUTIER CORRELEE A L’ACCIDENTOLOGIE :
UN PROBLEME ENTIEREMENT RESOLU ET UN PRODUIT SUR ETAGERE DISPONIBLE
par NEXYAD
INTRODUCTION
Mesurer la sécurité routière en fonction du contexte vécu par le conducteur est un sujet qui intéresse :
. les constructeurs automobiles, qui peuvent informer le conducteur d’éventuels dangers
. les développeurs du véhicule autonome qui ont besoin de prouver que le robot de conduite est
capable de minimiser le risque routier
. les gestionnaires de flottes et les assureurs qui souhaitent mesurer le risque pris par les conducteurs
. les gestionnaires de l’infrastructure routière qui cherchent à aménager les routes pour baisser le risque
d’accident
La société NEXYAD a développé un module embarqué, SafetyNex, qui permet d’estimer en temps réel le risque.
LES IDEES PRECONCUES CONCERNANT LE STYLE DE CONDUITE ET L’ACCIDENTOLOGIE
Beaucoup d’essais ont été réalisés ou en cours de réalisation, surtout par les assureurs et les gestionnaires
de flottes, pour mesurer ce qui s’appelle « le style de conduite ».
L’hypothèse est que certains conducteurs sont plus « nerveux » que d’autres, et que cela a un impact sur
l’accidentologie : ceux qui accélèrent ou freinent assez souvent brutalement seraient des « mauvais conducteurs », alors que ceux qui ont une conduite plus tranquille seraient des « bons » conducteurs.
Cette hypothèse est contredite par les faits. Il n’y a pas de liaison statistique entre le style de conduite et
l’accidentologie.
Formellement, chacun conçoit très bien que si un conducteur conduit très tranquillement, sans freiner, sans
accélérer, à 30 km/h, et qu’il grille un stop … son style de conduite est tranquille mais très accidentogène.
On voit alors qu’au-delà de la liaison statistique éventuelle, il ne peut y avoir de relation de cause à effet.
Toutes les expérimentations qui ont été menées ont conduit à ce résultat.
Toutes celles qui seront menées, basées sur le seuillage plus ou moins intelligent des valeurs d’accélérations
sont vouées à l’échec. Il ne faut pas confondre éco-conduite et conduite sûre.
Le style de conduite en lui-même ne peut être exploité qu’en regard :
. de l’infrastructure sur laquelle le véhicule évolue
. du trafic (présence d’autres usagers de la route)
. des conditions météo (visibilité, adhérence, …)
. du niveau d’attention du conducteur (distraction, hypovigilance, endormissement, …)
NEXYAD a développé une solution évolutive capable de prendre en compte tous ces facteurs.
SafetyNex en version « labo » est donc capable d’estimer le risque lié à la conduite de façon complète.
La version 2.1 de SafetyNex, en cours de déploiement, prend en compte l’adéquation du style de conduite au type et à la forme de l’infrastructure (ruptures sur les itinéraires, virages, passages piétons, croisements, …).
Cette version a été volontairement réduite car elle donne déjà une corrélation du risque estimé avec
l’accidentologie de plus de 90%, et elle est déployable à très bas coût :
. sur smart phone
. sur boîtier électronique (développé par un équipementier automobile de rang 1, sans utilisation de la prise OBD)
CORRELATION ENTRE L’ESTIMATION DU RISQUE PAR SafetyNex V2.1 ET L’ACCIDENTOLOGIE
NEXYAD a participé à des programmes de recherche collaborative depuis 2001, et a pu de cette manière collaborer avec des experts de l’équipement des routes.
En particulier, le programme de recherche SARI a conduit à des travaux de détection de ce que les experts appellent une « rupture sur l’itinéraire ». Par exemple, un virage peut constituer un grand danger lorsqu’il arrive derrière une longue ligne droite, alors que le même virage ne sera pas dangereux sur une route de montagne.
NEXYAD a publié un article lors de la conférence sur la Sécurité routière le 6 Mai 2010 à Paris : PRAC 2010 Prévention des Risques et Aide à La Conduite, Session 1 Caractérisation du risque routier vs. infrastructure « Evaluation du risque routier pour l’aide à la conduite ou le diagnostic de l’infrastructure », Johann Brunet, Pierre Da Silva Dias, Gérard Yahiaoui, PRAC 2010, Mai 2010, Paris.
Les travaux qui ont conduit à cette publication ont été intégrés au produit SafetyNex. Cela signifie que par construction, le risque estimé par SafetyNex est corrélé à l’accidentologie. Cela est vrai par construction, et NEXYAD a réalisé des essais sur routes, en ville, sur autoroutes, en zones urbaines, et a pu valider ce résultat.
PRINCIPE DE FONCTIONNEMENT DE SafetyNex V2.1
SafetyNex est un système à base de connaissances (système expert) qui applique les règles des experts de l’équipement. Ces règles sont rangées dans une base de règles sous une forme mathématique qui permet de les adapter de manière graduelle aux caractéristiques réelles de l’infrastructure.
Les entrées obligatoires sont :
. la carte de navigation et le GPS : afin de scruter la forme et les caractéristiques de l’infrastructure située en aval du véhicule (virages avec leur rayon de courbure, points d’intérêt de type passage piéton, croisement de routes, etc …)
. la vitesse instantanée du véhicule.
A partir de ces deux entrées, SafetyNex évalue, par application des règles, l’adéquation de la vitesse d’approche du véhicule en fonction du niveau de difficulté et de danger d’accidents de l’infrastructure.
Un conducteur sportif qui accélère fort, freine fort, mais passe les endroits dangereux à faible vitesse aura un risque faible.
Un conducteur tranquille qui grille un stop à 30 km/h mais qui n’accélère ni ne freine presque jamais aura un risque très élevé.
On le voit, SafetyNex n’est pas corrélé à la valeur absolue des accélérations, mais à l’adaptation FACTUELLE de la vitesse au type de difficulté de l’infrastructure, à chaque instant.
Des entrées supplémentaires (optionnelles) sont déjà prévue, et peuvent permettre de moduler l’estimation du risque pour la rendre encore plus précise :
. l’adhérence mobilisable (si l’on dispose d’un capteur, à connecter à l’entrée prévue à cet effet de SafetyNex)
. la météo (si l’on dispose de l’information spatio temporelle, à connecter à l’entrée prévue à cet effet de SafetyNex)
. la visibilité atmosphérique (si l’on dispose d’une mesure adéquate : exemple : une caméra et le module de mesure de visibilité atmosphérique VisiNex)
. la distance à d’éventuels obstacles ‘si l’on dispose d’une estimation adéquates : exemple : un radar, un lidar, ou une caméra avec les modules RoadNex et ObstaNex)
. un coefficient de distraction du conducteur (si l’on observe le conducteur avec une caméra et/ou si l’on surveille l’activité de son téléphone mobile, etc …)
Toutes ces entrées supplémentaires sont déjà prévues dans SafetyNex, mais elles augmentent le coût de déploiement de la solution en impliquant des capteurs (caméra, …) et de la puissance de calcul supplémentaire en amont de SafetyNex pour traiter les signaux et les images issus des capteurs optionnels.
L’utilisation de SafetyNex V2.1 avec uniquement les entrées obligatoires permet déjà une corrélation très forte du risque estimé avec l’accidentologie. Nous préconisons d’implanter cette version, déjà infiniment plus efficace que toutes les mesures embarquées que NEXYAD a pu découvrir dans son activité de veille.
L’intérêt de SafetyNex est que l’avenir est déjà assuré : la loi de Moore faisant baisser rapidement le coût de l’électronique et de l’informatique embarquées, SafetyNex est prêt à accueillir les entrées supplémentaires, dès que les utilisateurs voudront intégrer les caméras et les capteurs.
UTILISATIONS TYPES DE SafetyNex V2.1
. Sociétés d’assurances :
– Pay how you Drive
– Modulation prédictive du bonus malus : le même accident dans les mêmes conditions ne conduit pas aux mêmes conclusions en fonction de l’historique cumulé et de l’enregistrement des dernières secondes du risque de SafetyNex.
– Génération muette d’une variable de risque, corrélée à l’accidentologie, pour aider les actuaires à affiner la tarification
. Les gestionnaires de flottes
. Equipementiers automobile :
– Alarme sur risque
– Navigation intelligente capable de conseiller le conducteur
. Ingénieurs et chercheurs du véhicule autonome :
– Evaluation de la qualité de conduite générée par le robot
CONCLUSION
L’estimation embarquée du risque routier est aujourd’hui un problème résolu par un produit sur étagère, SafetyNex, déployable dès maintenant
à bas coût sur :
. téléphones mobiles
. boitier électronique d’un équipementier de rang 1 de l’automobile.
Et déjà prévu pour intégrer (dès que le coût est jugé acceptable) des capteurs d’adhérence et des caméras (par exemple) pour estimer le trafic et la visibilité atmosphérique, ainsi que des informations telles que la météo et la distraction du conducteur.
Tous ces éléments sont déjà traités par le système de règles de SafetyNex, si bien que l’outil peut évoluer rapidement à chaque baisse de coût des éléments capteurs et de la puissance de calcul rattachée à ces éléments capteurs.
Pour déployer SafetyNex, contacter NEXYAD : Olivier BENEL obenel@nexyad.net 01 39 04 13 60
REAL TIME ONBOARD RISK ESTIMATION CORRELATED WITH ROAD ACCIDENT :
AN ENTIRELY SOLVED PROBLEM AND A PRODUCT ALREADY AVAILABLE FOR DEPLOYMENT
by NEXYAD
INTRODUCTION
Measuring road safety in the context experienced by the driver is a topic of interest for several activities :
. car manufacturers, who can inform the driver of potential dangers
. autonomous vehicle developers who need to prove that the driving actually minimizes risk of accident.
. fleet managers and insurance companies who wish to measure the risk taken by drivers (how they drive)
. managers of road infrastructure that alway change infrastructure to adapt and lower the risk of accident
The company NEXYAD has been developing since 2001 an embedded onboard module, SafetyNex, to
estimate in real time the risk of accident.
PRECONCEIVED IDEAS ABOUT ROAD ACCIDENTS AND DRIVING STYLE
Many trials have been completed or in progress, particularly by insurance companies and fleet managers,
In order to measure what is called the “driving style”.
The assumption is that some drivers are more “nervous” than others, and that this has an impact on the accident: those that speed up or slow down quite often brutally would be “bad drivers” while those with a quieter driving style would be “good” drivers.
This assumption is contradicted by the facts. There is no statistical connection between the driving style and
the accident.
Formally, one can easily fancy very well that if a driver operates very quietly, without slowing, without
accelerating at 30 km / h, and if this driver passes through a stop road sign without braking … then the driving style is quiet but very accident-prone.
We then see that beyond the possible statistical link (that doesn’t exist), there can be no relationship of cause and effect.
All experiments that were conducted led to this result.
All those that will be conducted, based on more or less intelligent thresholding of the acceleration values are doomed to failure.
Do not confuse eco-driving and safe driving.
Driving style cannot be interpreted itself without context description :
. infrastructure shape and characteristic, on which the vehicle is traveling
. traffic (presence of other road users)
. weather conditions (visibility, grip, …)
. level of driver vigilance (distraction, drowsiness, sleep …)
NEXYAD has developed a scalable solution capable of taking into account all these factors.
SafetyNex is therefore able to estimate the risk of driving using all those variables.
Version 2.1 of SafetyNex, under deployment, takes into account the adequacy of driving style with the type and shape of infrastructure (breaks on route characteristics, turns, pedestrian crossings, intersections …).
This version has been intentionally reduced to « driving style vs infratructure characteristics », because it already gives a 90% correlation with accident and because this version is deployable at very low cost:
. on smart phone
. electronic device (developed by an automotive tier one company), without using the OBD socket)
CORRELATION OF RISK OF ACCIDENT ESTIMATED BY SafetyNex V2.1 AND ACCIDENT
NEXYAD participated in collaborative research programs since 2001, and worked then with experts from the road equipment.
In particular, SARI research program led to detecting what experts call “Break on the route characteristics”. For example, a turn with a big curve may be a danger when it arrives behind a long straight line, while the same curve will not be dangerous bend on a mountain road.
NEXYAD published a paper at the conference on road safety May 6, 2010 in Paris: PRAC 2010
Risk Prevention and Save The Conduct, Session 1 Characterization of road risk vs. infrastructure
« Evaluation du risque routier pour l’aide à la conduite ou le diagnostic de l’infrastructure », Johann Brunet, Pierre Da Silva Dias, Gérard Yahiaoui, PRAC 2010, Mai 2010, Paris.
The work that led to this publication were integrated in the available product SafetyNex. This means that by construction, the risk estimated by SafetyNex is correlated to the accident. This is true by construction, and NEXYAD conducted tests on roads, downtown, on motorways in urban areas, etc … and was able to validate this result.
PRINCIPLE OF SafetyNex V2.1
SafetyNet is a knowledge based system (expert system) which applies rules of the experts of the equipment.
These rules are stored in a rules data base in a mathematical form that can adapt to gradual actual characteristics of the infrastructure.
Required inputs are :
. the navigation map and the GPS: To examine the shape and type of the infrastructure located downstream of the vehicle (turns with their radius of curvature, points of interest like pedestrian crossing, crossroads, etc …)
. the instantaneous vehicle speed
From these two inputs, SafetyNex evaluates, by applying the rules, the adequacy of the driving speed of the vehicle to difficulty and danger of infrastructure.
A sporty driver accelerating hard, braking hard, but passing dangerous places at low speed will be scored with a low risk.
A quiet driver that passes through a stop road sing at 30 km / h without braking will be scored with a high risk.
A brutal braking cannot be considered as « bad driving » if it is necessary to avoid an accident …
We see then, that SafetyNex risk estimation is not correlated with the absolute value of acceleration, but with ACTUAL speed adaptation to difficulty and danger of the infrastructure, in real time.
Additional inputs (optional) are already scheduled, and can afford to modulate the estimated risk to increase acuracy of SafetyNex :
. grip (if one has a sensor to connect to the input provided for the purpose of SafetyNex)
. weather report (if one has the temporal and spatial information)
. atmospheric visibility (if one has adequate measure: example: a camera and the measuring module of atmospheric visibility : VisiNex)
. distance to potential obstacles (if it has an adequate sensor : eg radar, lidar, or camera with RoadNex ObstaNex modules)
. a driver distraction factor (if the driver is observed with a camera and / or if one monitors the activity of mobile phone, etc …)
All these additional inputs are already ready to be used by SafetyNex but of course, they increase the cost of deployment, involving sensors (camera, …) and additional computing power before getting in SafetyNex to process signals and images from the optional sensors.
Using SafetyNex V2.1 with only the required inputs already allows a very high correlation of the estimated risk with the accident. We recommend to implement this version, already infinitely more effective than any other onboard measurements.
The interest of SafetyNex is that the future is already assured: Moore’s Law by rapidly lowering the cost of electronics and embedded computing, SafetyNex is ready to process the additional inputs, when users want to integrate cameras and sensors.
TYPICAL USES OF SafetyNet V2.1
. Insurance Companies:
– Pay how you drive
– Predictive modeling of bonus malus: the same accident under the same conditions does not lead to the same conclusions based on accumulated historical and recording the last seconds risk SafetyNex
– Generation of a dumb risk variable, correlated to the accident, to help actuaries refine pricing (big data)
. Fleet managers
. Automotive equipment suppliers:
– Alarm on risk
– Intelligent Navigation able to advise the driver
. Engineers and researchers from autonomous vehicle:
– Driving Quality Assessment generated by the robot
CONCLUSION
Embedded estimation of road risk of accident is now a problem completely solved by a product available for deployment, SafetyNex.
SafetyNex is deployable at Low cost on:
. mobile phones
. electronic device of a Automotive Tier 1 supplier (without plugging the OBD).
And SafetyNex already planned to integrate (once the cost is acceptable) grip sensors and cameras (for example) to estimate traffic and atmospheric visibility, as well as information such as weather and driver distraction.
All of these are already processed by SafetyNex rules based system, so that the tool can quickly evoluate with each decrease in the cost of sensor elements and cost of computing power needed to compute sensors outputs.
To deploy SafetyNex, contact NEXYAD: Olivier BENEL obenel@nexyad.net +33 1 39 04 13 60
ITS World in Bordeaux has been a very intense week for MOVEO – Groupement ADAS specially for NEXYAD that received a lot’s of visits. Congress’s persons from everywhere in the world came to see our demos of road detection, obstacles detection, visibility measurement, estimation of risk for the driver in his environment, etc…
Booth B112 Moveo – Groupement ADAS
How to use SafetyNex V2.1 for Insurance applications, and for
Automotive applications (ADAS & autonomous vehicle)
by NEXYAD
INTRODUCTION: Description of 2.1 SafetyNex
SafetyNex is a software module proposed by the French company NEXYAD. This module aims to match the driving style (acceleration, vehicle speed) with the danger characteristics of infrastructure.
SafetyNex development started in 2001 and benefited from three national collaborative research programs (PREDIT and FUI) that allowed NEXYAD modeling expertise of road equipment notation accident-prone infrastructure.
Indeed, the accident-prone nature of a local infrastructure, cannot be deduced from statistical studies on this local element, for the simple reason that accidents are rare events.A driver has one accident every 70 000 km.
To investigate the accident, the experts of the equipment mainly use two methods:
. aggregated statistics at national and European level : it provides large numbers of accidents and thus make statistics relevant. But heterogeneous infrastructure through Europe makes it difficult to project results on a local infrastructure that has its own characteristics, sometimes far from the average characteristic in France or Europe.
. the observation of “near misses” or « almost accident » as they are numerous : most potential accidents can be nearly avoided by drivers. Experts of infrastructure developed observatories for those danger situations and it brings useful information.
From these elements, the experts of the infrastructure have published a set of rules for predicting accidents, based on characteristics, the accident-prone characters of a piece of infrastructure.
For example, a bend may be accident-prone if its radius greatly shortens in its middle (curve which closes), but a “normal” curve may become dangerous if it comes after a long distance of straight line (this is called “break out on the pathway “).
NEXYAD integrated all these rules in SafetyNex and has made numerous tests on real world to validate the efficiency of scoring danger.
SafetyNex V2.1 reads on-board navigation map that gives infrastructure characteristics , downstream of the vehicle, and then SafetyNex scores the relevancy of the driving style, knowing the shape of the road ahead and other important things (pedestrian pathway, …).
Note: in a higher version (already being tested), SafetyNex may also reflect the presence of other users on the road (cars, trucks, bicycles, motorcycles, pedestrians …) by coupling it to RoadNex (road detection by camera), and ObstaNex (obstacles detection by camera).
But this version will require to have appropriate computing power to process videos. The Moore law lets us think i twill be easy and cheap in 2 or 3 years.
For now, we think that adaptation of the driving type with infrastructure characteristics meets a real issue and SafetyNex V2.1 is the only available (and for sale) module in the world for performing this function.
The output computed by SafetyNex is the road safety risk, between 0 and 100%, at every moment.
It is possible to use SafetyNex in real time to alert the driver.
It also may be used off-line, aggregating the risk : SafetyNex used to complete big data with revelant variables to study the road safety risk, in a statistical way.
SafetyNex is available in three types of running environments:
. PC under Windows or Linux
. Electronic device of an Automotive Tier One Company, for the new vehicles and aftermarket
. smartphones
SafetyNex V2.1 FOR USE OF INSURANCE
Insurance Companies have several ways to use SafetyNex V2.1:
. free distribution of the SafetyNex App for smartphones to all their customers :
In this case, the business model is to seek partners who want to reduce their cost of acquiring customers online.
In fact, when you divide the advertising budget of a major retailer (Amazon, Fnac, Darty, …) by the number of purchases, there are about 30 euros (cost of a customer).
The idea of NEXYAD then is to propose a serious game that “gives” points to drivers who behave well.
These points are converted into “coupons” with one or more distributors. The drivers will go on the website in order to validate coupons by purchasing products. In doing so (spotted digitally with flash code …), the distributor will give back 15 euros : 7,5 euros for the cupons, and 7,5 euros for the Insurance Company that distributed the NEXYAD App to their millions of customers. The insurer therefore makes money and share revenue with NEXYAD and its technology partners.
This solution is particularly interesting for several reasons:
. the insurance company earns money directly on millions of purchases.
. drivers do their best to earn coupons, and therefore change their driving behavior to achieve it.
The insurer therefore modifies in a sustainable way the driving style, and contributes to the decline in the number of accidents. The Communications Department of the the Insurance company may use this fact for communicating it to the public.
. the largest distributors lower their customers acquisition costs and they can then lower their advertising budget
. the driver improves self safety, and is able to purchase more.
. distribution in an electronic device :
The electronic device has the advantage of being still operational without driver intervention.
This solution is particularly interesting for business fleets, and allows to quickly and efficiently initiate a type of pricing system “pay how you drive” that may be seen as an extension of the bonus / malus system, but with a predictive power.
. constitution of big data for actuaries:
Risk can be recorded onboard, or in aggregate, giving statisticians a new variable for more accuracy on pricing.
SafetyNex V2.1 FOR USE IN ADAS AND AUTONOMOUS CAR APPLICATIONS
The road safety risk measurement is of course interesting for automotive applications :
. SafetyNex read the shape of infrastructure downstream of the vehicle (electronic horizon), and can therefore help to choose which types of sensors are relevant.
. SafetyNex can estimate the maximum distance targetable by sensors (radar, camera, …) depending on the shape of the infrastructure (turn, climb, …)
. During a delegation of driving, the robot drives the vehicle and then SafetyNex V2.1 can estimate the road safety related to the automatic driving.
The road safety score can be used in several ways:
. Off-line: the engineers who design and develop driving delegation system uses the risk score of SafetyNex V2.1 as a feedback, and try to minimize it by successive tests.
. On-line: the risk score is used by the decision-making system to generate actions that lead to the lowest possible risk.
CONCLUSION
SafetyNex V2.1 is now available and NEXYAD is currently working on deployment opportunities worldwide at the beginning of 2016.
This module is unique and has a direct effect, if properly used, on road safety.
For more information: sales@nexyad.net
DEMO WITH SOUND IN URBAN TRAFFIC
Put the sound on for this demo with vocal explanations :
1) Known life situations
Indeed, the methodology AGENDA proposes to describe potential changes of signals and images came into factors of variability and their crosses.
Example, for obstacle detection :
. weather (dry overcast, sunny weather, rain, fog)
. overall brightness (low, medium, high)
. speed of the carrier vehicle (low, moderate, high)
. type of road (highway, road with marking, road without marking …)
. coating (bitumen 1, bitumen 2, …, cobblestones)
. day / night (headlights and the lights switched infrastructure)
. season (spring, summer, autumn, winter)
. etc …
> type of obstacle :
– stopped
. infrastructure-related: work terminals, tolls, …
. related users: tire on the road, parcel felt from a truck lying on the road, biker following a road accident, disabled vehicle stopped on the floor, standing pedestrian on roadside edge (dodger / no sniper)
– moving
. truck, car, vulnerable (pedestrian, bicycle, motorcycle) each with types trajectories (longitudinal
in rolling direction, longitudinally in the opposite direction of rolling side) and position (opposite
to right, left).
. Etc…
We see that if we cross these factors, we find fairly quickly a huge number of cases. However, the development of ADAS systems is complex, and it is necessary to proceed by successive iterations, starting from simple situations to move to complicated situations.
Our database allows this, since all records are described in terms of crossing the terms of the factors of variability. Thus knows exactly which cases were tested or not by the system.
Formalism ‘crossing of variability factors of the terms’ allows using design of experiments, and in particular orthogonal fractional plans to sharply reduce the number of cases to be tested while ensuring maximum coverage of life situations. One can in this context to develop a fractional ADAS on an orthogonal plan and test other hard fractional orthogonal planes for example.
2) Reality reference
This is to crop images barriers and infrastructure elements (markings, roadsides, etc.) so as to constitute a reference to measure system performance.
. Examples of life situations:
1.1, summer, overcast, unmarked road, moderate speed tire on the floor, dry weather
1.2, summer, overcast, unmarked road, moderate speed, parcels on the floor, dry weather
2.1, summer, overcast , unmarked road, moderate speed, standing pedestrians non ambush at the edges of the floor, dry weather
2.2, summer, overcast, unmarked road, moderate speed, lying on the floor human, dry weather
etc …
Not sure that you would meet those few cases, even with on million kilometers on open roads.
NEXYAD starts his collection of images and data:
. video (towards the front of the vehicle) Color
. accelerometers
. gyros
The files are synchronized by RT-MAPS tool INTEMPORA society.
The files are saved as RT-MAPS format and replayable directly by this tool.
NEXYAD currently looking for contributors on this internal project. Co contributors fund and in return free access to the database, unlimited in time. This contribution will accelerate the work of collecting and labeling.
NEXYAD wishes to provide this basis before June 2016, free way to give the material to the community and the ADAS autonomous vehicle for a smaller version of the database, and pay way (as subscriptions) for complete database.
NEXYAD’s ambition is to spread its methodological expertise and allow everyone to assess the performance of vision systems for ADAS, whether systems developed by NEXYAD, or others.
“Methodology for ADAS Validation: Potential Contribution of Other Scientific Fields Which Have Already Answered the Same Questions”, Gérard Yahiaoui, Pierre Da Silva Dias, CESA congress Dec 2014, Paris, proc. Springer Verlag
“Methods and tools for ADAS validation”, Gérard Yahiaoui, Nicolas du Lac, Safetyweek congress, May 2015, Aschaffenburg
For questions, or if you wish to become a contributor, please contact NEXYAD : +33 139041360
The company NEXYAD has been working on this issue for over 20 years without interruption, and has accumulated a large number of cases of road types, of coatings, in various atmospheric conditions.
This is to detect the rollable area on the road, without regard to, in a first step, lane markings.
Indeed, in Europe, there are many unmarked roads, and work on a marked road may change the markings and
make a « follow the markings strategy » dangerous.
In the images below you can see on the left a typical French countryside road with no markings, and on the right image, new markings was achieved while former markings still strongly visible.
These cases are quite common on our European roads and a driver assistance system, or a driving delegation
system, must at least understand such cases and if necessary tell the driver to cope with it by himself.
The NEXYAD road detection module, RoadNex V2.1 is a brick to go further to cope with these cases :
RoadNex V2.1 should be coupled with road signs detection, road markings detection, obstacle detection, in order to build an intelligent perception system. RoadNex is then a key module of such a system.
The road detection module NEXYAD, RoadNex V2.1 is available as a component into the asynchronous real time framework RT-MAPS : See HERE
SafetyNex is now running in RT-Maps by IMTEMPORA
SafetyNex is under fusion with Ecogyzer (eco driving rating system) : this “package” will be the ultimate tool for eco and safe driving combination.
SafetyNex v2.1
SafetyNex News on the “Groupement ADAS” blog : Road Safety Measurement for insurance applications
http://groupementadas.canalblog.com/archives/2015/08/21/32515456.html
NEXYAD Automotive & Transportation will be present in Bordeaux for ITS World Congress. On the french R&D competitiveness cluster MOV’EO’s “Groupement ADAS” booth.
At the safety week symposium in Aschaffenburg (Germany), NEXYAD presented :
. A paper about ADAS validation : methodology and tools
. The products on the booth : RoadNex (road detection), ObstaNex (Obstacles detection),
VisiNex Onboard (visibility measurement), SafetyNex (estimating safety level of driving).
SafetyNex is a high level functional bloc (sofware) for ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) : onboard measurement of driving behaviour, taking into account map and GPS geolocation (shape of the road, crossing roads, … ahead), speed, accelerations, visibility, adherence, distance to obstacle, etc.
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Very soon on RT-Maps…
