A Network-Level Connected Autonomous Driving Evaluation Platform Implementing C-V2X Technology

With the emerging connected autonomous driving paradigm,more advanced applications leveraging vehicular communications are drawing tremendous attentions.In order to analyze the feasibility and performance of these applications,it is necessary to build an evaluation platform that jointly considers vehicular communication,road traffic and vehicle dynamics.This article describes our recent progress on network-level autonomous driving simulator based on the Cellular-Vehicle-to-Everything(C-V2X)protocol,and a joint platform combined with SUMO and CARLA simulators for evaluating road traffic and vehicle dynamics.To demonstrate its effectiveness,this article implements a hybrid multi-intersection scheduling scheme on the platform,and shows the advantages of the scheme in terms of traffic efficiency and fault tolerance.A remote driving application based on CARLA,wherein the interplay between communication and computation is also investigated.

Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Coastal Wetlands and Reclamation in the Yangtze Estuary During Past 50 Years(1960s–2015)

Reclamation is one of the fastest-growing land use type developed in coastal areas and has caused degradation and loss of coastal wetlands as well as serious environmental problems. This paper was aimed at monitoring the spatiotemporal patterns of coastal wetlands and reclamation in the Yangtze Estuary during the 1960s and 2015. Satellite images obtained from 1980 to 2015 and topography maps of the 1960 s were employed to extract changes of reclamation and coastal wetlands. Area-weight centroids were calculated to identify the movement trend of reclamation and coastal wetlands. The results show that from the 1960 s to 2015, the net area of natural wetlands declined by 574.3 km^2, while man-made wetlands and reclamation increased by 553.6 and 543.9 km^2, respectively. During the five study phases, the fastest areal change rate natural wetlands was –13.3 km^2/yr in the period of 1990–2000, and that of man-made areas was 24.7 km^2/yr in the same period, and the areal change rate of reclamation was 27.6 km^2/yr in the period of 2000–2010. Conversion of coastal wetlands mainly occurred in the Chongming Island, Changshu City and the east coast of Shanghai Municipality. Reclamation was common across coastal areas, and was mainly attributed to settlement and man-made wetlands in the Chongming Island, Lianyungang City and the east coast of Shanghai Municipality. Natural wetlands turned into farmlands and settlement, and man-made wetlands gained from reclamation of farmlands. The centroid of natural wetlands generally moved towards the sea, man-made wetlands expanded equally in all directions and inland, and the centroid of reclamation migrated toward Shanghai Municipality. Sea level rise, erosion-deposition changes, and reclamation activities together determine the dynamics of the Yangtze Estuary wetlands. However, reclamation activities for construction of ports, industries and aquaculture are the key causes for the dynamics. The results from this study on the dynamics of coastal wetlands and reclamation are valuable for local government to put forward sustainable land use and land development plans.

Spatio-temporal Variations in Plantation Forests'Disturbance and Recovery of Northern Guangdong Province Using Yearly Landsat Time Series Observations(1986-2015)

Forest disturbance plays a vital role in modulating carbon storage,biodiversity and climate change.Yearly Landsat imagery from 1986 to 2015 of a typical plantation region in the northern Guangdong province of southern China was used as a case study.A Landsat time series stack(LTSS) was fed to the vegetation change tracker model(VCT) to map long-term changes in plantation forests' disturbance and recovery,followed by an intensive validation and a continuous 27-yr change analysis on disturbance locations,magnitudes and rates of plantations' disturbance and recovery.And the validation results of the disturbance year maps derived from five randomly identified sample plots with 25 km^2 located at the four corners and the center of the scene showed the majority of the spatial agreement measures ranged from 60% to 83%.A confusion matrix summary of the accuracy measures for all four validation sites in Fogang County showed that the disturbance year maps had an overall accuracy estimate of 71.70%.Forest disturbance rates' change trend was characterized by a decline first,followed by an increase,then giving way to a decline again.An undulated and gentle decreasing trend of disturbance rates from the highest value of 3.95% to the lowest value of 0.76% occurred between 1988 and 2001,disturbance rate of 4.51% in 1994 was a notable anomaly,while after 2001 there was a sharp ascending change,forest disturbance rate spiked in 2007(5.84%).After that,there was a significant decreasing trend up to the lowest value of 1.96% in 2011 and a slight ascending trend from 2011 to 2015(2.59%).Two obvious spikes in post-disturbance recovery rates occurred in 1995(0.26%) and 2008(0.41%).Overall,forest recovery rates were lower than forest disturbance rates.Moreover,forest disturbance and recovery detection based on VCT and the Landsat-based detections of trends in disturbance and recovery(LandT rendr) algorithms in Fogang County have been conducted,with LandT rendr finding mostly much more disturbance than VCT.Overall,disturbances and recoveries in northern Guangdong were triggered mostly by timber needs,policies and decisions of the local governments.This study highlights that a better understanding about plantations' changes would provide a critical foundation for local forest management decisions in the southern China.

Intelligent-Assist Algorithm for Remote Shared-Control Driving Based on Game Theory

Contemporary autonomous-driving technology relies on good environmental-perception systems and high-precision maps.For unknown environments or scenarios where perception fails,a human-in-the-loop remote-driving system can effectively complement common solutions,although safety remains an issue for its application.A haptic shared-control algorithm based on non-cooperative game theory is presented in this paper.The algorithm generates collision-free reference paths with model predictive control and predicts the driver’s path using a two-point preview model.Man-machine torque interaction is modeled as a Nash game,and the assist system’s degree of intervention is regulated in real time,according to assessments of collision risk and the driver’s concentration.Simulations of several representative scenarios demonstrate how the proposed method improves driving safety,while respecting driver decisions.