Search Results

Many accidents occur today when distant objects or roadway impediments are not quickly detected. To help avoid these accidents, longer-range safety systems are needed with real-time detection capability and without requiring a line-of-sight (LOS) view by the driver or sensor. Early detection at intersections is required for obstacle location around blind corners and dynamic awareness of approaching vehicles on intersecting roadways. Many of today's vehicular safety systems require short LOS distances to be effective. Such systems include forward collision warning, adaptive cruise control, and lane keeping assistance. To operate over longer LOS distances and in Non-LOS (NLOS) conditions, cooperative wireless communications systems are being considered. This paper describes field results for LOS and NLOS radio links for one candidate wireless system: 5.9GHz Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC).

For the past four years the San Francisco Fire Department has owned and operated an American La France Triple Combination Engine Company powered with a Boeing Model 502 gas turbine engine. This engine company, in first line fire service, has illustrated the practicability of the gas turbine in vehicular applications. The purpose of this paper is to outline the experience gained by the use of a gas turbine engine in such an installation.

Countless articles and publications3,4,5 have documented and proven the efficacy, benefits and value of operating within a lean system. Furthermore, there exists common agreement amongst leading organizations successfully implementing a lean system that in order to do so it must take into consideration the entire enterprise, that is, from supplier to customer and everything in between6. One of the core issues this paper addresses is when the optimal time is to train and educate the people who currently have, or will have, influence over the ‘enterprise’.

Many newer commercial vehicles have an event data recorder (EDR) that can record pre-event and post-event speeds. The EDR is incorporated into the engines electronic control module (ECM). In this study, the accuracy of the ECM-reported speed was tested during acceleration, gear shifting and braking at speeds between 16 and 88 km/h (10 to 55mph). The ECM-reported speed was compared to the speed measured by a calibrated optical 5th wheel. The results showed that the accuracy of the ECM-reported speed matched closely during acceleration, cycled to periods of under-reporting the speed during hard braking due to the ABS brake function, briefly under-reporting the speed after letting off the throttle for braking or gear shift and briefly over-reporting the speed near the end of a gear shift phase. This study also looked at calibration factors of the ECM and their effect on the ECM-reported speed.

As part of an overall effort to support the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) national program to increase seat belt usage, General Motors instituted an employe seat belt use incentive program at the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. This program was responsible for raising seat belt use at the Tech Center from 36% to 70% during its 5 1/2 month duration. The program was patterned, in part, after research work done by professor E. Scott Geller of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University under a grant from the General Motors Research Laboratories and a program conducted by Berg Electronics (a DuPont subsidiary). The intent of the program was to provide sufficient positive incentive to employes to buckle up for an extended period of time, thereby establishing a seat belt use habit that will continue after the incentives are no longer offered.

The onboard “SODART” telescope silicon detector cooling system of the “Spectrum-X-Gamma” observatory, which is designed for the space objects X-ray radiation study, is described. The scale-down model of the passive cooling system description and thermal vacuum test results of this model are given. In the real cooling system the minimal detector temperature at 300 mW heat release is expected about 107 K.

A sense of “personal integrity” blocks pilot use of new information about how he thinks. Research on human performance under stress done over the past fifty years indicates increased rigidity and regression to earlier learned behavior in high stress, and in low Stress a shift in attention to any domestic situation or on the job controversy which is of higher stress than that of the job at hand, all without the pilot's knowledge. Informal surveys of commercial pilot training and commercial pilot attitudes towards these studies indicate that the study findings directly confront learned cultural responses. Pilot and trainer reactions prevent the information from being adequately investigated or formally taught. The findings are not written into training manuals and pilots who are informally given the information do not have adequate access to the knowledge when it is needed.

A large number of testing procedures have been developed to ensure vehicle safety in common and extreme driving situations. However, these conventional testing procedures are insufficient for testing autonomous vehicles. They have to handle unexpected scenarios with the same or less risk a human driver would take. Currently, safety related systems are not adequately tested, e.g. in collision avoidance scenarios with pedestrians. Examples are the change of pedestrian behaviour caused by interaction, environmental influences and personal aspects, which cannot be tested in real environments. It is proposed to use augmented reality techniques. This method can be seen as a new (Augmented) Pedestrian in the Loop testing procedure.

Vehicle dynamics is a discipline of mechanical engineering that benefited of significant improvements thanks to the progress of computational engineering. Vehicle dynamics engineers are using CAE for the development of a vehicle with MBS and FEA. The concurrent use of these two technologies is a standard in the automotive industry. However the current simulation process is not fully efficient because local geometrical and material nonlinearities are not accurately modeled in classical MBS software. This paper introduces a methodology for vehicle dynamics simulation integrating MBS capabilities in one single nonlinear FEA environment enabling an accurate modeling of nonlinearity in vehicles.

This paper describes the interrelated controls for automatic start sequencing, fuel scheduling, customer air delivery, and supervisory and protective systems as applied to the Curtiss-Wright CW657E “Jet-Air” Compressor. Model CW657E is capable of delivering 15,000 SCFM air at 85 psig (at 30°F and sea level pressure) and may be used in a diversity of manufacturing, processing, and industrial applications. A description of the control system and its operation in relation to compressor requirements, while furnishing air to feed distribution lines to air assisted water atomizing nozzles for snow making is reviewed as an example. Other models can deliver up to 30,000 SCFM with modified control systems, including pressure controls.

The requirement for crew resource management (CRM), or aircrew coordination training (ACT) in military parlance, has been well documented and attested to. In addition, aircraft systems training has become more intense and more in-depth in the new aircraft designs, especially in multi-crew and complex aircraft such as the MV-22 Osprey Tiltrotor. (see Figure 1) Former training systems detailed training procedures that called for classroom training and simulation/simulator training followed by flight training. Improvements in aircraft flight skills training provide increased flying training capability coupled with reduced training time by integrating a mixed simulation/flight training syllabus, e.g. two to three simulation periods followed by one or two flight training periods covering the same material/skills. In addition, the simulation training will introduce new skills; the following flight periods will further refine/hone those skills.

Carbon and rephosphorized pre-strained sheet steels for cold drawing forming operations were studied and the tensile, high cycle fatigue and fatigue crack propagation properties were determined. The fatigue limit was found to be higher for 20% than for 1% pre-strained condition. Threshold stress intensity factors (▵Ků) of 5.29 MPa. m1/2 for rephosphorized steel and 7.07 MPa. m1/2 for carbon steel. Critical crack lenghts were calculated by ▵Ků and fatigue limit data using the Lukas-Klesnil short-crack criterion. Through fractographic analysis it was possible to determine the general behavior of tested materials near threshold.

Driver state monitoring is a crucial technology for enhancing road safety and preventing human error-caused accidents in the era of autonomous vehicles. This paper presents CogniSafe, a comprehensive driver monitoring system that uses deep learning and computer vision methods to detect various types of driver distractions and fatigue. CogniSafe consists of four modules: Driver anomaly detection and classification: A novel two-phase network that proposes and recognizes driver anomalies, such as texting, drinking, and adjusting radios, using multimodal and multiview input. Gaze estimation: A video-based neural network that jointly learns head pose and gaze dynamics, achieving robust and efficient gaze estimation across different head poses. Eye state analysis: A multi-tasking CNN that encodes features from both eye and mouth regions, predicting the percentage of eye closure (PERCLOS) and the frequency of mouth opening (FOM).

This paper is an extension of our previous work on the CHASE (Classification by Holistic Analysis of Scene Environment) algorithm, that automatically classifies the driving complexity of a road scene image during day-time conditions and assigns it an ‘Ease of Driving’ (EoD) score. At night, apart from traffic variations and road type conditions, illumination changes are a major predominant factor that affect the road visibility and the driving easiness. In order to resolve the problem of analyzing the driving complexity of roads at night, a brightness detection module is incorporated in our end-to-end nighttime EoD system, which computes the ‘brightness factor’ (bright or dark) for that given night-time road scene. The brightness factor along with a multi-level machine learning classifier is then used to classify the EoD score for a night-time road scene. Our end-to-end ‘Night-time EoD system’ is a real-time onboard system implemented and tested on road scene data collected in Japan.

“Digital Prototype” simulations have been used at DaimlerChrysler to achieve vehicle level NVH objectives. The effectiveness of these simulations to guide the design when faced with vehicle parameter uncertainties is discussed. These uncertainties include, but are not limited to, material properties, material gauges, damping, structural geometry, loads, boundary conditions and weld integrity. Manufacturing and assembly processes introduce variations in the nominal values of these parameters resulting in a scatter of vehicle level NVH simulation responses. An example of a high frequency NVH concern will be studied and modified to arrive at robust design guidance when faced with uncertainty. The validity of a “deterministic digital prototype” simulation model and its relevant role as a “trend predictor” rather than “absolute predictor” tool in guiding the design is also discussed.

The Boeing Company in Mesa, Arizona, has been conducting a concept design study of a roadable helicopter called the “Converticar” to assess its feasibility. This is a twin-engine vehicle with twin retractable coaxial counter-rotating rotors. The purpose of the study is to describe a vehicle that carries four passengers in the equivalent of a luxury car that also can fly like a helicopter, and can be priced like a luxury car. To come near this cost goal, the production rate must be on the order of 500,000 units a year. At that rate there is no chance of training a comparable number of pilots each year. So the machine must fly and navigate autonomously, with the pilot just dialing in where he/she wants to go. Technologically, the concept appears to be feasible. Modern design processes, new materials, and improved manufacturing process should allow the Converticar to be built at the prescribed rate when the proper infrastructure for manufacturing it is made available.

The U.S. National Highway Transportation and Safety Agency's (NHTSA) early estimates of Motor Traffic Fatalities in 2009 in the United States [1] show continuing progress on improving traffic safety on the U.S. roadways. The number of total fatalities and the fatality rate per 100 Million Vehicle Miles (MVM), both show continuing declines. In the 10 year period from 1999 through 2009, the total fatalities have dropped from 41,611 to 33,963 and the fatality rate has dropped from 1.5 fatalities per 100MVM to 1.16 fatalities per 100MVM, a compound annual drop of 2.01% and 2.54% respectively. The large number of traffic fatalities, and the slowing down of the fatality rate decline, compared to the decade before, continues to remain a cause of concern for regulators.