Shadow Extraction and Elimination of Moving Vehicles for Tracking Vehicles

Shadow extraction and elimination is essential for intelligent transportation systems(ITS)in vehicle tracking application.The shadow is the source of error for vehicle detection,which causes misclassification of vehicles and a high false alarm rate in the research of vehicle counting,vehicle detection,vehicle tracking,and classification.Most of the existing research is on shadow extraction of moving vehicles in high intensity and on standard datasets,but the process of extracting shadows from moving vehicles in low light of real scenes is difficult.The real scenes of vehicles dataset are generated by self on the Vadodara–Mumbai highway during periods of poor illumination for shadow extraction of moving vehicles to address the above problem.This paper offers a robust shadow extraction of moving vehicles and its elimination for vehicle tracking.The method is distributed into two phases:In the first phase,we extract foreground regions using a mixture of Gaussian model,and then in the second phase,with the help of the Gamma correction,intensity ratio,negative transformation,and a combination of Gaussian filters,we locate and remove the shadow region from the foreground areas.Compared to the outcomes proposed method with outcomes of an existing method,the suggested method achieves an average true negative rate of above 90%,a shadow detection rate SDR(η%),and a shadow discrimination rate SDR(ξ%)of 80%.Hence,the suggested method is more appropriate for moving shadow detection in real scenes.

Telematics as a Transformative Agent for the Zimbabwean Auto Insurance Ecosystem

Zimbabwe has witnessed the evolution of Information Communication Technology (ICT). The vehicle population soared to above 1.2 million hence rendering the Transport and Insurance domains complex. Therefore, there is a need to look at ways that can augment conventional Vehicular Management Information Systems (VMIS) in transforming business processes through Telematics. This paper aims to contextualise the role that telematics can play in transforming the Insurance Ecosystem in Zimbabwe. The main objective was to investigate the integration of Usage-Based Insurance (UBI) with vehicle tracking solutions provided by technology companies like Econet Wireless in Zimbabwe, aiming to align customer billing with individual risk profiles and enhance the synergy between technology and insurance service providers in the motor insurance ecosystem. A triangulation through structured interviews, questionnaires, and literature review, supported by Information Systems Analysis and Design techniques was conducted. The study adopted a case study approach, qualitatively analyzing the complexities of the Telematics insurance ecosystem in Zimbabwe, informed by the TOGAF framework. A case-study approach was applied to derive themes whilst applying within and cross-case analysis. Data was collected using questionnaires, and interviews. The findings of the research clearly show the importance of Telematics in modern-day insurance and the positive relationship between technology and insurance business performance. The study, therefore revealed how UBI can incentivize positive driver behavior, potentially reducing insurance premiums for safe drivers and lowering the incidence of claims against insurance companies. Future work can be done on studying the role of Telematics in combating highway crime and corruption.

Simulation study on starting of dual clutch transmission for tracked vehicles

In order to study the application of dual clutch transmission （DCT） on tracked vehicles, a simulation moclel and two control methods were performed for starting analysis. Based on a certain transmission of an existing tracked vehicle, a DCT structure was proposed. Matlab/Simulink was a dopted as a platform to develop the simulation model. The engine speed was controlled to follow the target speed as a launch strategy. Two control methods, a proportional integral derivative （ PID ） control method and a fuzzy control method, were proposed to control the engine throttle and oil pressure in order to track the target engine speed. Simulation results show that either the PID control or fuzzy control method can improve the starting performance compared with no loop control meth od. Fuzzy control method can lead a better starting quality compared with PID control method.

Track Tension Analysis of Four-Wheel Drive Tracked Vehicles

The distribution of track tension on track link is complex when the tracked vehicles run at a high speed.A multi-drive track link structure,which changes the traditional induction wheel into the driving wheel was proposed.The mathematical model of the system was established and the distribution of track tension was studied.The combined simulation model of RecurDyn and Simulink of the structure with multi-drive track was established.The simulation results show that our proposed structure has more uniform tension distribution than traditional structures,especially under the high speed condition.The maximum tension can be reduced by 28 kN-36 kN and the transmission efficiency can be improved by10%-16% under high speed condition with this new structure.

Secured Vehicle Life Cycle Tracking Using Blockchain and Smart Contract

Life Cycle Tracking(LCT)involves continuous monitoring and analy-sis of various activities associated with a vehicle.The crucial factor in the LCT is to ensure the validity of gathered data as numerous supply chain phases are involved and the data is assessed by multiple stakeholders.Frauds and swindling activities can be prevented if the history of the vehicles is made available to the interested parties.Blockchain provides a way of enforcing trustworthiness to the supply chain participants and the data associated with the various actions per-formed.Machine learning techniques when combined decentralized nature of blockchains can be used to develop a robust Vehicle LCT model.In the proposed work,Harmonic Optimized Gradient Descent andŁukasiewicz Fuzzy(HOGD-LF)Vehicle Life Cycle Tracking in Cloud Environment is proposed and it involves three stages.First,the Progressive Harmonic Optimized User Registra-tion and Authentication model is designed for computationally efficient registra-tion and authentication.Next,for the authentic user,the Gradient Descent Blockchain-based SVM Data Encryption model is designed with minimum CPU utilization.Finally,Łukasiewicz Fuzzy Smart Contract Verification is per-formed with encrypted data to ensure accurate and precise fraudulent activity deduction.The experimental analysis shows that the proposed method achieves significant performance in terms of life cycle’s prediction time,overhead,and accuracy for a different number of users.

Fuzzy Logic Control for Suspension Systems of Tracked Vehicles

A scheme of fuzzy logic control for the suspension system of a tracked vehicle is presented. A mechanical model for the whole body of a tracked vehicle, which is totally a fifteen-degree-of-freedom system, is established. The model includes the vertical motion, the pitch motion as well as the roll motion of the tracked vehicle. In contrast to most previous studies, the coupling effect among the vertical, the pitch and the roll motions of the suspension system of a tracked vehicle is considered simultaneously. The simulation of fuzzy logic control under road surface with random excitation shows that the acceleration, pitch angle and roll angle of suspension system can be efficiently controlled.

Control strategy for hybrid tracked vehicles using fuzzy logic

To solve the problem of power distribution for hybrid tracked vehicles （HTV）, a supervi- sory control strategy is proposed. Firstly, power system integration is analyzed and modeled. Then the control algorithm is given. Two fuzzy logics are used to realize the coordination control over each power unit. One controls power distribution based on the load power and battery state of charge （SOC）. The other manage the power during regenerating braking. To validate the presented control strategy, a ＂driver and controller＂ in the loop simulation platform is built based on dSPACE system and real-time simulation is made. The simulation results show that the strategy presented can solve the power distribution problem of hybrid tracked vehicles correctly and effectively.

Study on control mechanism for turning of tracked vehicles with twin driving

Turning mechanism is important assemblies for tracked vehicles. Turning performance is important evaluating indicator. The performance of the turning mechanism directly affect the mobility and productivity of the crawler. However, there are still some problems crying out for solutions in superior turning mechanism for vehicle engineering area. Composition and performance of turning system in agricultural tracked vehicles matched with twin driving differential turning mechanism was introduced, which adopted quiet hydraulic double pumps and double motors, took advantage of flexibility greatly for track vehicle turning and benefit for handling used steering wheel.

Development of a tracking-based system for automated traffic data collection for roundabouts

Traffic data collection is essential for performance assessment, safety improvement and road planning. While automated traffic data collection for highways is relatively mature, that for roundabouts is more challenging due to more complex traffic scenes, data specifications and vehicle behavior. In this paper, the authors propose an automated traffic data collection system dedicated to roundabout scenes. The proposed system has mainly four steps of processing. First, camera calibration is performed for roundabout traffic scenes with a novel circle-based calibration algorithm. Second, the system uses enhanced Mixture of Gaussian algorithm with shaking removal for video segmentation, which can tolerate repeated camera displacements and background movements. Then, Kalman filtering, Kemel-based tracking and overlap-based opti- mization are employed to track vehicles while they are occluded and to derive the complete vehicle trajectories. The resulting vehicle trajectory of each individual vehicle gives the position, size, shape and speed of the vehicle at each time moment. Finally, a data mining algorithm is used to automatically extract the interested traffic data from the vehicle trajectories. The overall traffic data collection system has been implemented in software and runs on regular PC. The total processing time for a 3-hour video is currently 6 h. The automated traffic data collection system can significantly reduce cost and improve efficiency compared to manual data collection. The extracted traffic data have been compared to accurate manual measurements for 29 videos recorded on 29 different days, and an accuracy of more than 90% has been achieved.

Vision-Based On-Road Nighttime Vehicle Detection and Tracking Using Taillight and Headlight Features

An important and challenging aspect of developing an intelligent transportation system is the identification of nighttime vehicles. Most accidents occur at night owing to the absence of night lighting conditions. Vehicle detection has become a vital subject for research to ensure safety and avoid accidents. New vision-based on-road nighttime vehicle detection and tracking system are suggested in this survey paper using taillight and headlight features. Using computer vision and some image processing techniques, the proposed system can identify vehicles based on taillight and headlight features. For vehicle tracking, a centroid tracking algorithm has been used. Euclidean Distance method has been used for measuring the distances between two neighboring objects and tracks the nearest neighbor. In the proposed system two flexible fixed Region of Interest (ROI) have been used, one is the Headlight ROI, and another is the Taillight ROI that could adapt to different resolutions of the images and videos. The achievement of this research work is that the proposed two ROIs can work simultaneously in a frame to identify oncoming and preceding vehicles at night. The segmentation techniques and double thresholding method have been used to extract the red and white components from the scene to identify the vehicle headlights and taillights. To evaluate the capability of the proposed process, two types of datasets have been used. Experimental findings indicate that the performance of the proposed technique is reliable and effective in distinct nighttime environments for detection and tracking of vehicles. The proposed method has been able to detect and track double lights as well as single light such as motorcycle light and achieved average accuracy and average processing time of vehicle detection about 97.22% and 0.01 s per frame respectively.

YOLOv2 Deep Learning Model and GIS Based Algorithms for Vehicle Tracking

The latest advances in Deep Learning based methods and computational capabilities provide new opportunities for vehicle tracking. In this study, YOLOv2 (You Only Look Once—version 2) is used as an open source Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), to process high-resolution satellite images, in order to generate the spatio-temporal GIS (Geographic Information System) tracks of moving vehicles. At first step, YOLOv2 is trained with a set of images of 1024 × 1024 resolution from the VEDAI database. The model showed satisfactory results, with an accuracy of 91%, and then at second step, is used to process aerial images extracted from aerial video. The output vehicle bounding boxes have been processed and fed into the GIS based LinkTheDots algorithm, allowing vehicles identification and spatio-temporal tracks generation in GIS format.

Mechanical properties of foamed polyurethane solidified ballasted track

Foamed Polyurethane Solidified Ballasted Track(FPSBT),an innovative railway track,is formed by solidifying ballast bed with foamed polyurethane.Compared with the traditional Discrete Ballasted Track(DBT),FPSBT does not require regular maintenance such as tamping and cleaning.However,limited studies exist on the mechanical properties of FPSBT.In this study,Laboratory experiments are conducted on polyurethane samples to investigate the effects of polyurethane density on the mechanical properties of FPSBT.Furthermore,the performance of DBT and FPSBT with different polyurethane densities are compared,and the recommended polyurethane density is obtained.FPSBT exhibited negligible accumulation of deformation under cyclic loads,indicating excellent performance of FPSBT owing to the anti-deformation properties of polyurethane.Further,a track load vehicle test is conducted.FPSBT exhibited better load-transmitting ability than DBT.Finally,the construction and application of FPSBT in China are introduced.This study is expected to contribute to realizing a more extensive application of FPSBT.

NONLINEAR ESTIMATION METHODS FOR AUTONOMOUS TRACKED VEHICLE WITH SLIP

In order to achieve precise,robust autonomous guidance and control of a tracked vehicle,a kinematic model with longitudinal and lateral slip is established,Four different nonlinear filters are used to estimate both state vector and time-varying parameter vector of the created model jointly.The first filter is the well-known extended Kalman filter.The second filter is an unscented version of the Kalman filter.The third one is a particle filter using the unscented Kalman filter to generate the importance proposal distribution.The last one is a novel and guaranteed filter that uses a linear set-membership estimator and can give an ellipsoid set in which the true state lies.The four different approaches have different complexities,behavior and advantages that are surveyed and compared.

A Study on the Dynamic Analysis of A Tracked Vehicle for Ocean Mining on the Deep Seabed

A study is presented on the dynamic analysis of a tracked vehicle for mining on the deep seabed of very soft soil. Equations for the interaction between the track and extremely soft seabed are employed to develop a track/soil interaction module called TVAS. The vehicle is modeled as a multibody dynamic system by the use of a multibody dynamic analysis program. The module developed is cooperated with the multibody dynamic analysis program with a user-defined subroutine. The dynamic behavior and the conceptual design of the mining vehicle on the deep seabed are investigated.

Predicting the sinkage of a moving tracked mining vehicle using a new rheological formulation for soft deep-sea sediment

The sinkage of a moving tracked mining vehicle is greatly af fected by the combined compression-shear rheological properties of soft deep-sea sediments. For test purposes, the best sediment simulant is prepared based on soft deep-sea sediment from a C-C poly-metallic nodule mining area in the Pacific Ocean. Compressive creep tests and shear creep tests are combined to obtain compressive and shear rheological parameters to establish a combined compressive-shear rheological constitutive model and a compression-sinkage rheological constitutive model. The combined compression-shear rheological sinkage of the tracked mining vehicle at dif ferent speeds is calculated using the Recur Dyn software with a selfprogrammed subroutine to implement the combined compression-shear rheological constitutive model. The model results are compared with shear rheological sinkage and ordinary sinkage(without consideration of rheological properties). These results show that the combined compression-shear rheological constitutive model must be taken into account when calculating the sinkage of a tracked mining vehicle. The combined compression-shear rheological sinkage decrease with vehicle speed and is the largest among the three types of sinkage. The developed subroutine in the Recur Dyn software can be used to study the performance and structural optimization of moving tracked mining vehicles.

Study on Steering Control Strategy for High-Speed Tracked Vehicle with Hydrostatic Drive

Steering control strategy for high-speed tracked vehicle with hydrostatic drive is designed based on analyzing the fundamental steering theories of the hydrostatic drive tracked vehicle. The strategy is completed by the cooperation between integrated steering control unit and pump ＆ motor displacement controller. The steering simulation is conducted by using Simulink of Matlab. It is indicated that this steering control strategy can reduce the average vehicle speed automatically to achieve the driver＇s expected steering radius exactly in the case of en- suring not exceeding the system pressure threshold and no sideslip.

Influence of structure and material on the vibration modal characteristics of novel combined flexible road wheel

Aiming at the independent development of tracked vehicles,it is urgent to improve its mobility,passability and ride comfort,a new type of flexible road wheel with a“wheel-hinge-hub”combined structure is proposed in this study.The vibration model characteristics of the flexible road wheel were studied by the combination of numerical simulation and experiments.The superelasticity of rubber is obtained through uniaxial tensile experiment of the material and a detail three-dimensional nolinear finite element model of the flexible road wheel is established through finite element software ABAQUS.The free vibration equation of the flexible road wheel is solved by Lanczos vector direct superposition method,and its predicted modes and natural frequencies are compared with experimental results,which verifies the accuracy and reliability of the established finite element model.On this basis,the effects of various key structural or material factors on the natural frequencies of the flexible road wheel are studied using orthogonal experimental design method.Besides,the vibration modal characteristics of the flexible road wheel are also compared with those of the rigid road wheel.The research results provide a theoretical basis for the vibration and noise reduction of flexible road wheel.

Chassis tra fficability simulation and experiment of a LY1352JP forest tracked vehicle

Based on the analysis of complex terrains and current forest transportation equipment,a forest tracked vehicle prototype LY1352 JP was developed.The road model and the virtual prototype of the chassis were constructed using dynamic simulation software RecurDyn.The optimal tension of the vehicle as well as its capabilities for crossing trenches,climbing vertical walls,uphill and downhill slopes were simulated.The simulation results showed that the optimum tension force of the chassis of the vehicle was 63 kN(kilonewton),accounting for 45%of the total vehicle weight.The maximum trench crossing width and vertical obstacle climbing height were 1.35 m and 0.45 m,respectively.The maximum uphill and downhill angles were 50°and 45°,respectively.Tests on the prototype capacity for crossing trenches,and uphill and downhill driving were carried out.The test results were in agreement with the simulation results.A cross-country performance of a fire truck based on the tracked vehicle chassis was conducted in an old-growth forest.Tests verified that the vehicle has a strong forest trafficability performance and can meet the needs for forest transportation.

Parameter Identification and Application of Slippage Kinematics for Tracked Mobile Robots

A new parameter identification method is proposed to solve the slippage problem when tracked mobile robots execute turning motions.Such motion is divided into two states in this paper:pivot turning and coupled turning between angular velocity and linear velocity.In the processing of pivot turning,the slippage parameters could be obtained by measuring the end point in a square path.In the process of coupled turning,the slippage parameters could be calculated by measuring the perimeter of a circular path and the linear distance between the start and end points.The identification results showed that slippage parameters were affected by velocity.Therefore,a fuzzy rule base was established with the basis on the identification data,and a fuzzy controller was applied to motion control and dead reckoning.This method effectively compensated for errors resulting in unequal tension between the left and right tracks,structural dimensions and slippage.The results demonstrated that the accuracy of robot positioning and control could be substantially improved on a rigid floor.

Slip-Control Strategy of Dual Independent Electric Drive Tracked Vehicle

In order to improve the brake performance of a dual independent electric drive tracked vehicle,a dynamic model for braking situation was established.Then,a sliding model controller(SMC)with an auxiliary system was designed to control the slip and its effectiveness was proved.A hardware-in-loop simulation through MATLAB/XPC was compared with the normal SMC and normal integral sliding mode controller(ISMC),the results show that SMC with the auxiliary system has a better performance:a smaller overshoot and steady state error.The disturbance is suppressed effectively.In the initial speed of 65.km/h,the brake distance was shortened by 3.4%and 6.8%compared with the other two methods,respectively.Finally,initial speeds of 30-36.km/h tests was carried out on a flat soil road.Compared with a no-control brake,the displacement was shortened by 1.8.m.It demonstrates the effectiveness of the slip-control strategy.In the same situation,the error between the simulation and test is 18.1%,which validates the accuracy of models.