• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.163-172
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• 2012

A driver assistance system is critical to improve a convenience and stability of vehicle driving. Several systems have been already commercialized such as adaptive cruise control system and forward collision warning system. Efficient vehicle detection is very important to improve such driver assistance systems. Most existing vehicle detection systems are based on a radar system, which measures distance between a host and leading (or oncoming) vehicles under various weather conditions. However, it requires high deployment cost and complexity overload when there are many vehicles. A camera based vehicle detection technique is also good alternative method because of low cost and simple implementation. In general, night time vehicle detection is more complicated than day time vehicle detection, because it is much more difficult to distinguish the vehicle's features such as outline and color under the dim environment. This paper proposes a method to detect vehicles at night time using analysis of a captured color space with reduction of reflection and other light sources in images. Four colors spaces, namely RGB, YCbCr, normalized RGB and Ruta-RGB, are compared each other and evaluated. A suboptimal threshold value is determined by Otsu algorithm and applied to extract candidates of taillights of leading vehicles. Statistical features such as mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis, and entropy are extracted from the candidate regions and used as feature vector for SVM(Support Vector Machine) classifier. According to our simulation results, the proposed statistical feature based SVM provides relatively high performances of leading vehicle detection with various distances in variable nighttime environments.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.165-173
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• 2017

PURPOSES : The current practice in car headlight visibility performance evaluation is based on the luminous intensity and illuminance of headlight. Such practice can be inappropriate from a visibility point of view where visibility indicates abilities to perceive an object ahead on the road. This study aimed at evaluating the appropriateness of current headlight evaluation method. METHODS : This study measured the luminance of object and road surface at unlit roadways. The variables were measured by vehicle type and by headlight lamp type. Based on the measurements, the distance where drivers can perceive an object ahead was calculated and then compared against such distance obtained by conventional visibility performance evaluation. RESULTS : The evaluation method based on illuminance of headlight is not appropriate when viewed from the visibility concept that is based on object-perceivable distance. Further, the results indicated a shorter object-perceiving distance even when road surface luminance is higher, thereby suggesting that illuminance of headlight and luminance of road surface are not the representative indices of nighttime visibility. CONCLUSIONS : Considering that this study utilized limited vehicle types and that road surface (background) luminance can vary depending on the characteristics of the given road surface, it would likely go too far to argue that this study's visibility performance evaluation results can get generalized to other conditions. Regardless, there is little doubt that the current performance evaluation criterion which is based on illuminance, is unreasonable. There should be future endeavors on the current subject which will need to explore study conditions further, under which more experiments should be conducted and effective methodologies developed for evaluating automotive headlight visibility performance. Needs are recognized particularly in the development of headlight visibility performance evaluation methodology which will take into account road surface (background) luminance and luminance contrast from various perspectives as the former indicates the driver's perception of the front road alignment and the latter being indicative of object perception performance.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.163-174
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• 2023

Purpose - This study examines the effect of consumers' motivations on the perception and purchase intentions of electric cars. Specifically, it empirically analyzes how moral motivations based on personal environmental values and norms in car usage and purchasing influence the perceived usefulness and purchase intentions of electric cars. Furthermore, it investigates whether the influence of moral motivations on perceived usefulness and purchase intentions varies according to the user's driving characteristics. Design/methodology/approach - An online survey was conducted with 234 respondents, by setting criteria for participants as car owners or primary car users within their households, ensuring the sample composition was not biased in terms of the presence or absence of experience with eco-friendly cars. Findings - The research findings indicate that perceived usefulness mediates the effect of consumers' moral motivations on their intention to purchase electric cars. The results of the moderating effect of driving distance on perceived usefulness revealed a significant interaction effect; however, there was no significant interaction effect on purchase intentions. Specifically, for individuals with shorter driving distances, as consumers' moral motivations increase, their perception of the usefulness of electric cars also increases. In contrast, for those with longer driving distances, the increase in perceived usefulness due to moral motivations shows a decreasing trend. Research implications or Originality - This study considered individual driving characteristics that previous research on electric vehicle adoption overlooked, and suggested that setting specific communicating points for electric cars according to driving distance levels might be effective. Lastly, it proposes directions for future research that motivations influencing eco-friendly vehicle purchases may differ based on driving characteristics

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.120-127
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• 2007

This paper describes the development of a nonlinear observer for four wheel steer (4WS) vehicle. An observer is designed to estimate the vehicle variables difficult to measure directly. A brake yaw motion controller (BYMC), which uses a PID control method, is also proposed for controlling the brake pressure of the rear and inner wheels to enhance lateral stability. It induces the yaw rate to track the reference yaw rate, and it reduces a slip angle on a slippery road. The braking and steering performances of the anti-lock brake system (ABS) and BYMC are evaluated for various driving conditions, including straight, J-turn, and sinusoidal maneuvers. The simulation results show that developed ABS reduces the stopping distance and increases the longitudinal stability. The observer estimates velocity, slip angle, and yaw rate of 4WS vehicle very well. The results also reveal that the BYMC improves vehicle lateral stability and controllability when various steering inputs are applied.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.1125-1132
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• 2012

The researches on driver assistance systems that can prevent an accident have been actively performed due to social issues of traffic accidents with development of vehicle industry in recent. It is required for researchers to develope systems which assist driver's perception and judgment when considering that over 70% of traffic accidents occur by drivers' carelessness and 75% of the total accidents occur at the speed of less 29km per hour. In this paper, we implemented a front and rear vehicle monitoring system that monitors distance from a vehicle to obstacles in real-time at the low-speed or back-ward driving. The proposed system consists of ultrasonic sensors of high angle and wide angle of beam spread, ATmega128, and DSP processor.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.207-217
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• 2000

In this paper, we describe an image processing algorithm which is able to recognize the road lane. This algorithm performs to recognize the interrelation between AGV and the other vehicle. We experimented on AGV driving test with color CCD camera which is setup on the top of vehicle and acquires the digital signal. This paper is composed of two parts. One is image preprocessing part to measure the condition of the lane and vehicle. This finds the information of lines using RGB ratio cutting algorithm, the edge detection and Hough transform. The other obtains the situation of other vehicles using the image processing and viewport. At first, 2 dimension image information derived from vision sensor is interpreted to the 3 dimension information by the angle and position of the CCD camera. Through these processes, if vehicle knows the driving conditions which are angle, distance error and real position of other vehicles, we should calculate the reference steering angle.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.243-249
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• 2015

In direct vehicle teleoperation, a human operator drives a vehicle at a distance through a pair of master and slave device. However, if there is time delay, it is difficult to remotely drive the vehicle due to slow response. In order to address this problem, we introduced a novel methodology of shared vehicle teleoperation using a virtual driving interface. The methodology was developed with four components: 1) virtual driving environment, 2) interface for virtual driving environment, 3) path generator based on virtual driving trajectory, 4) path following controller. Experimental results showed the effectiveness of the proposed approach in simple and cluttered driving environment as well. In the experiments, we compared two sampling methods, fixed sampling time and user defined instant, and finally merged method showed best remote driving performance in term of completion time and number of collision.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.123-125
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• 2010

As the exterior noise emitted by a vehicle is getting more and more attention, simulated pass-by measurements become more important. This well established method provides information about the total noise emitted by the vehicle. For a vehicle manufacturer it is not only interesting to know about the total noise but also to know how this total exterior noise is composed of different contributions, such as for example the contribution of the engine, the intake or exhaust system. Transfer path analysis (TPA) provides a separation of these contributions for each of the pass-by microphones alongside the track. Presented is a method for fast and efficient determination of the contributions of multiple sources using operational transfer path analysis (OTPA). The calculation of the transfer characteristics between the reference measurement points on the vehicle and the corresponding response points of both microphone lines are carried out while operation of the vehicle. As result of the contribution analysis from operational transfer path analysis, the characteristic noise level as function of the covered distance is displayed for all individual sound sources, thus providing in depth information for sound quality engineering.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.409-416
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• 2002

This study was conducted to develop a vehicle, leading or following a worker at a certain distance to assist laborious transporting works in greenhouses. A prototype vehicle, which consisted of the rear driving, the front steering and the console units, was designed and tested in the ideal indoor conditions. Results of this study were summarized as following: 1. The driving unit was designed to travel at the speed ranges of 0.3∼0.8 m/sec depending on the operating modes with a maximum payload of 100 kg. 2. The console unit consisted of a main-board including a 80C196KC microprocessor and peripheral devices, a power-board and safety interlock. Worker-leading, and following modes were available in automatic and manual modes. 3. Steering was achieved by turning the steering motor against the sensed direction. Proper steering angles for correcting travel direction were determined as 5 and 9 degrees when sensing cultivation beds and plants, respectively.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.1369-1379
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• 2001

This paper focuses on a development of a sensor system measuring locations of a vehicle to localize a mobile robot while it tracks on the track (location sensor) . Also it focuses on a system configuration identifying the vehicle's orientation and distance from the object while it is stationary at certain station (position sensor) . As for the location sensor it consists of a set of sensors with a combined guiding and counting sensor, and an address-coded sensor to localize the vehicle while moving on the rail. For the position sensor a PSD (Position Sensitive Device) sensor with photo-switches sensor to measure the offset and orientation of the vehicle at each station is introduced. Both sensor systems are integrated with a microprocessor as a data relay to the main computer controlling the vehicle. The location sensor system is developed and its performance for a mobile robot is verified by experiments. The position measuring system is proposed and is robust to the environmental variation. Moreover, the two kinds of sensor systems guarantee a low cost application and high reliability.