Browsing by Subject "Real time information"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    A Comprehensive System for Assessing Truck Parking Availability
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2017-01) Morris, Ted; Murray, Dan; Fender, Kate; Weber, Amanda; Morellas, Vassilios; Cook, Doug; Papanikolopoulos, Nikos
    Commercial heavy vehicle (CHV) drivers are required under federal Hours of Services (HOS) rules to rest and take breaks to reduce driving while fatigued. CHV drivers and operators must balance compliance to the HOS rules against on-time delivery requirements as well as shorter lead times to plan their trips, thereby making location and parking availability of rest area facilities more critical. Without timely, accurate parking availability information, drivers are left with the dilemma of continuing to drive fatigued, drive beyond HOS CHV operation limits, or park illegally on highway shoulders or ramps—all potential safety hazards. In this study, a multi-view camera system was designed and evaluated to detect truck parking space occupancy in real-time through extensive field operational testing. A system architecture was then developed to disseminate up-to-the-minute truck parking information through three separate information delivery systems: 1) Roadside Changeable Message Signs (CMS), 2) Internet/Website information portal, and 3) an onboard geolocation application. The latter application informs the driver of parking availability of one or more parking facilities that are downstream from their current direction of travel. All three notification mechanisms were evaluated during the field test. Survey studies were conducted to provide feedback from commercial heavy vehicle drivers and operators to better understand their perceptions of parking shortages and utility of the parking information delivery mechanisms. Overall, the system has proven to provide 24/7 around-the-clock per-space parking status with no need for manual interventions to correct detection errors, with per parking space accuracy typically equal to or exceeding 95 percent. The concept of operations field tests demonstrated the feasibility of the technical approach and the potential to alter freight borne trip behaviors by allowing drivers and carriers to plan stops and improve trip efficiency.
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    Development of a New Tracking System Based on CMOS Vision Processor Hardware, Phase II Prototype Demonstration
    (Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2012-05) Tang, Hua; Peng, Li
    Intelligent transportation systems depend on being able to track vehicle operations and collect accurate traffic data. This project targets a hardware-based video detection system for real-time vehicle detection. To allow real-time detection, customized hardware implementation of the system is targeted instead on the traditional computer-based implementation of the system. The system includes four main processing steps. First, a camera is used to capture images. Second, the captured images are segmented using the Mixture-of-Gaussian algorithm. Without sacrificing the segmentation accuracy, researchers modified the Mixture-of-Gaussian algorithm to allow more efficient and economical hardware implementation in terms of design overhead and hardware resources. Third, the segmentation regions are extracted and validated as the objects of interests. In the last step, the validation result will be wirelessly transmitted to a variable message sign, which displays necessary traffic information. Since the system design includes integration of diverse devices, the video design kit from Xilinx is used. Such a hardware-based vehicle detection system has been experimented tested with practical videos of traffic scene.
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    A Real-Time Truck Availability System for the State of Wisconsin
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2018-05) Morris, Ted; Henderson, Travis; Morellas, Vassilios; Papanikolopoulos, Nikos
    Independent of truck parking capacity shortages, obtaining reliable and timely information has been receiving considerable attention nationally as of late. The situation has been exacerbated by increasing levels of freightborne truck volumes along many regional and interstate corridors and the need for carriers and drivers to balance efficient transport with required periods to park and rest to minimize driver fatigue. Interstate 94, a nationally designated freight corridor, as it passes through the Upper Midwest, including Wisconsin, shares this problem. A multi-camera computer vision detection system was deployed at a state sponsored rest area truck parking facility 67 miles east of Minneapolis. A key aspect of the system is that it is a completely automated 24/7, non-intrusive, parking detection system; there is no need to intervene with manual resets or re-calibration procedures, and pavements are not disturbed. Secondly, a region-wide truck parking notification architecture, recognized as an emerging national standard, was integrated with the detection system to provide real-time roadside truck parking notifications upstream of the facilities, as well as notification to other third party stakeholders. The overall detection accuracy was between 90 and 95 percent during up-to-the minute, per-space parking status notifications.
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    Sensing for HOV/HOT Lanes Enforcement
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2017-02) Morris, Ted; Morellas, Vassilios; Canelon-Suarez, Dario; Papanikolopoulos, Nikolaos
    The use and creation of combined high-occupancy vehicle/high-occupancy toll (HOV/HOT Lanes) have become more common in urban areas since all types of road users can take advantage of the lane either as a high- occupancy vehicle or opting in to pay a congestion adjusted free. However, to maintain working integrity of the lanes for all users, stepped enforcement to discourage cheating has been needed as more lanes are added. This study evaluated the capability of a novel image sensor device to automate detection of in-vehicle occupants to flag law enforcement of HOV/HOT lane violators. The sensor device synchronously captures three co-registered images, one in the visible spectrum and two others in the infrared bands. The key idea is that the infrared bands can enhance correct occupancy detection through known phenomenological spectral properties of objects and humans residing inside the vehicle. Several experiments were conducted to determine this capability across varied conditions and scenarios to assess detection segmentation algorithms of vehicle passengers and drivers. Although occupancy detection through vehicle glass could be achieved in many cases, improvements must be made to such a detection system to increase robustness and reliability as a law enforcement tool. These improvements were guided by the experimental results, as well as suggested methods for deployment if this or similar technologies were to be deployed in the future.