Elastic Band Based Pedestrian Collision Avoidance using V2X Communication

This paper is on a pedestrian collision warning and avoidance system for road vehicles based on V2X communication. In cases where the presence and location of a pedestrian or group of pedestrians cannot be determined using line-of-sight sensors like camera, radar and lidar, signals from pedestrians' smartphone apps are used to detect and localize them relative to the road vehicle through the DSRC radio used for V2X communication. A hardware-in-the-loop setup using a validated automated driving vehicle model in the high fidelity vehicle dynamics simulation program Carsim Real Time with Sensors and Traffic is used along with two DSRC modems emulating the vehicle and pedestrian communications in the development and initial experimental testing of this method. The vehicle either stops or, if possible, goes around the pedestrians in a socially acceptable manner. The elastic band method is used to locally modify the vehicle trajectory in real time when pedestrians are detected on the nearby path of the vehicle. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated using hardware-in-the-loop simulations.