Chapter-2 Google's Self-Driving Car Works

Once a secret project, Google's autonomous vehicles are now out in the open, quite literally, with the company test-driving them on public roads and, on one occasion, even inviting people to ride inside one of the robot cars as it raced around a closed course. Google's fleet of robotic Toyota Priuses has now logged more than 190,000 miles (about 300,000 kilometers), driving in city traffic, busy highways, and mountainous roads with only occasional human intervention. The project is still far from becoming commercially viable, but Google has set up a demonstration system on its campus, using driverless golf carts, which points to how the technology could change transportation even in the near future. Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun, who guides the project, and Google engineer Chris Urmson discussed these and other details in a keynote speech at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in San Francisco last month. Thrun and Urmson explained how the car works and showed videos of the road tests, including footage of what the on-board computer "sees" [image below] and how it detects other vehicles, pedestrians, and traffic lights. google self driving car road test Google has released details and videos of the project before, but this is the first time I have seen some of this footage -- and it's impressive. It actually changed my views of the whole project, which I used to consider a bit far-fetched. Now I think this technology could really help to achieve some of the goals Thrun has in sight: Reducing road accidents, congestion, and fuel consumption. Urmson, who is the tech lead for the project, said that the "heart of our system" is a laser range finder mounted on the roof of the car. The device, a Velodyne 64-beam laser, generates a detailed 3D map of the environment. The car then combines the laser measurements with high-resolution maps of the world, producing different types of data models that allow it to drive itself while avoiding obstacles and respecting traffic laws. The vehicle also carries other sensors, which include: four radars, mounted on the front and rear bumpers, that allow the car to "see" far enough to be able to deal with fast traffic on freeways; a camera, positioned near the rear-view mirror, that detects traffic lights; and a GPS, inertial measurement unit, and wheel encoder, that determine the vehicle's location and keep track of its movements.

Chapter-3 Google self driving car systems

Two things seem particularly interesting about Google's approach. First, it relies on very detailed maps of the roads and terrain, something that Urmson said is essential to determine accurately where the car is. Using GPS-based techniques alone, he said, the location could be off by several meters. The second thing is that, before sending the self-driving car on a road test, Google engineers drive along the route one or more times to gather data about the environment. When it's the autonomous vehicle's turn to drive itself, it compares the data it is acquiring to the previously recorded data, an approach that is useful to differentiate pedestrians from stationary objects like poles and mailboxes. The video above shows the results. At one point you can see the car stopping at an intersection. After the light turns green, the car starts a left turn, but there are pedestrians crossing. No problem: It yields to the pedestrians, and even to a guy who decides to cross at the last minute. Google self driving car Sometimes, however, the car has to be more "aggressive." When going through a four-way intersection, for example, it yields to other vehicles based on road rules; but if other cars don't reciprocate, it advances a bit to show to the other drivers its intention. Without programming that kind of behavior, Urmson said, it would be impossible for the robot car to drive in the real world. Clearly, the Google engineers are having a lot of fun (fast forward to 13:00 to see Urmson smiling broadly as the car speeds through Google's parking lot, the tires squealing at every turn). But the project has a serious side. Thrun and his Google colleagues, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are convinced that smarter vehicles could help make transportation safer and more efficient: Cars would drive closer to each other, making better use of the 80 percent to 90 percent of empty space on roads, and also form speedy convoys on freeways. They would react faster than humans to avoid accidents, potentially saving thousands of lives. Making vehicles smarter will require lots of computing power and data, and that's why it makes sense for Google to back the project, Thrun said in his keynote. Urmson described another scenario they envision: Vehicles would become a shared resource, a service that people would use when needed. You'd just tap on your smartphone, and an autonomous car would show up where you are, ready to drive you He said they put together a video showing a concept called Caddy Beta that demonstrates the idea of shared vehicles -- in this case, a fleet of autonomous golf carts. He said the golf carts are much simpler than the Priuses in terms of on-board sensors and computers. In fact, the carts communicate with sensors in the environment to determined their location and "see" the incoming traffic.

Chapter-4 Artificial Intelligence Software

Artificial intelligence is the making of intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence. This system exhibits human intelligence and behaviour include robots, expert systems, voice recognition, natural language processing, face recognition, handwriting recognition, game intelligence, artificial creativity and more. By this technology both google map and google street view are interrelated. Google Map: Google Maps is a Google service offering powerful, user-friendly mapping technology and local business information-including business locations, contact information, and driving directions. Google Street View: Google Street View (GSV) has rapidly expanded to provide street-level images of entire cities all around the world. The number and density of geo-positioned images available make this service truly unprecedented. A Street View user can wander through city streets, enabling a wide range of uses such as scouting a neighbourhood, or nding specic items such as bike racks or mail boxes. LIDAR Sensor: Light Detection And Ranging is an optical remote sensing technology that can measure the distance to, or other properties of a target by illuminating the target with light, often using pulses from a laser. LIDAR uses ultraviolet, visible, or near infrared light to image objects and can be used with a wide range of targets, including non-metallic objects, rocks, rain, chemical compounds, aerosols, clouds and even single molecules. A narrow laser beam can be used to map physical features with very high resolution. Position Sensor: This device provides the latitude, longitude and altitude together with the corresponding standard deviation and the standard NMEA messages with a frequency of 5 Hz. When geostationary satellites providing the GPS drift correction are visible from the car, the unit enters the di erential GPS mode (high precision GPS). When no correction signal is available, the device outputs standard precision GPS.

Chapter-6 Car Night Vision Systems

As you might imagine, the two auto moguls get from point A to point B in entirely separate ways. Mercedes-Benz uses an active system or near-IR system that illuminates the night with projected infrared light, much like optics found in military-issue night-vision goggles. BMW's passive system, on the other hand, uses far-IR or FIR technology in its onboard night-vision systems. Unlike night-vision optics used for military applications, BMW's system registers images based on body heat and produces images that resemble a photo negative. While that works well for deciphering between animals and people, it doesn't do much for revealing a dead animal in the middle of the road or perhaps a large rock or a fallen tree. BMW's infrared system uses complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-based sensors on the front of the car that pick up heat from objects and processes the thermal signature to display images on a quarter video graphics array (QVGA) display (320x240-pixel resolution) mounted on the dash in the center of the vehicle's console. In a nutshell, the BMW's system picks up the heat of the animal or pedestrian and displays it as a bright image. The warmer the target, the brighter the image displays. It has a range of around 980 feet (299 meters) and can pan in the direction the vehicle is heading. The FIR night vision system illuminates what's directly in front of the vehicle reasonably well, but doesn't offer the clarity found in the Mercedes system. In contrast, the Mercedes system uses NIR technology and produces an even, clear picture in the dark. This system is similar to night-vision goggles soldiers use. Like the military-issued nightvision goggles, the NIR system in the Mercedes illuminates everything as if it were in the high beams of the vehicle. By utilizing a series of projection bulbs and cameras, the Mercedes' active night-vision system picks up the faintest traces of light and transforms it into a clear picture. The advantage is that the Mercedes system can see warmer living things just as clear as it can spot colder, dead animals or non-living objects. The drawback to the Mercedes system is its range: The system has a maximum effective range of less than 600 feet (183 meters). Another drawback is the Mercedes' NIR system doesn't handle fog well, while the BMW's FIR system can see through the dense conditions. But unlike the BMW's system, the Mercedes monitor is located behind the steering wheel, directly in the driver's line of sight to the road, and the image quality is also crisper on the NIR system. Both systems can be turned on or off by the driver with controls found near the high-beam lever and neither system is affected by oncoming bright lights. Both are easy on the eyes too, so sensitivity to light should not be a problem for most drivers. Researchers from the two companies are also in the process of perfecting warning indicators on the night-vision systems. The challenge is to be able to decipher what's a hazard and what's merely a heat signature. The goal is for the systems to be able to set off an alarm when a pedestrian or animal is close enough to the road to be hazardous. Both systems cost an extra $2,000 to $2,500. While that may sound like a significant amount of money, when you look at the price tag of a 7-Series BMW or S-Class Mercedes, two vehicles that can easily top $100,000, it somehow seems a bit more reasonable especially

Chapter-7

Sensor
For other uses, see Sensor (disambiguation). "detector" redirects here. For detector circuits in signal electronics, see detector_(radio). "Sensors" redirects here. For other uses, see Sensors (disambiguation). A sensor is a converter that measures a physical quantity and converts it into a signal which can be read by an observer or by an (today mostly electronic) instrument. For example, a mercury-inglass thermometer converts the measured temperature into expansion and contraction of a liquid which can be read on a calibrated glass tube. A thermocouple converts temperature to an output voltage which can be read by a voltmeter. For accuracy, most sensors are calibrated against known standards. Sensors are used in everyday objects such as touch-sensitive elevator buttons (tactile sensor) and lamps which dim or brighten by touching the base. There are also innumerable applications for sensors of which most people are never aware. Applications include cars, machines, aerospace, medicine, manufacturing and robotics. A sensor is a device, which responds to an input quantity by generating a functionally related output usually in the form of an electrical or optical signal. A sensor's sensitivity indicates how much the sensor's output changes when the measured quantity changes. For instance, if the mercury in a thermometer moves 1 cm when the temperature changes by 1 C, the sensitivity is 1 cm/C (it is basically the slope Dy/Dx assuming a linear characteristic). Sensors that measure very small changes must have very high sensitivities. Sensors also have an impact on what they measure; for instance, a room temperature thermometer inserted into a hot cup of liquid cools the liquid while the liquid heats the thermometer. Sensors need to be designed to have a small effect on what is measured; making the sensor smaller often improves this and may introduce other advantages. Technological progress allows more and more sensors to be manufactured on a microscopic scale as microsensors using MEMS technology [1]. In most cases, a microsensor reaches a significantly higher speed and sensitivity compared with macroscopic approaches.

Proximity sensor Infrared proximity sensor. A proximity sensor is a sensor able to detect the presence of nearby objects without any physical contact. A proximity sensor often emits an electromagnetic field or a beam of electromagnetic radiation (infrared, for instance), and looks for changes in the field or return signal. The object being sensed is often referred to as the proximity sensor's target. Different proximity sensor targets demand different sensors. For example, a capacitive or photoelectric sensor might be suitable for a plastic target; an inductive proximity sensor always requires a metal

Chapter-8 Automatic Braking Systems

Ah, the morning commute. You're exhausted, traffic is crawling, and your phone is already chirping away with e-mails, appointment reminders and to-do items that you'd rather not do at all. You glance down to see what that stupid device is freaking out about this time, and when you look back up, the Humvee in front of you has stopped. It's now inches in front of you. You make a face like surprised little Macaulay Culkin in "Home Alone" and jam on the brakes, hopefully in time to avoid a huge insurance bill and an angry woman in a muumuu suing you for whiplash.But this kind of mishap may be a thing of the past, thanks to automatic braking. These sophisticated systems use the sensors and computers in your car to anticipate an accident and help your sleepy-self avoid bumping fenders -- or worse. These accident avoidance technologies have been available abroad for years, but we're really just beginning to see them in the United States in the past few years. You might think that's because we're so lawsuit-happy over here (remember that muumuu-wearing whiplash victim we mentioned?), but David Sullivan, the resident expert at Subaru on its EyeSight system, gives a more charitable explanation. "The U.S. is such a broad, highly varied market with many different needs. People across the country drive differently, and the different regions are like a bunch of little countries," he said. In Japan, where they've had EyeSight since the 2007 model year, roads are "fairly homogeneous, and road laws are the same everywhere." No special rules about U-turns or left on a one-way or right on red -- but not that red, not in this state -- for them. In pretty much every case, automatic braking is part of a suite of safety system technology that works together to save your sorry butt. The system in a Subaru is called EyeSight; in a Volvo, it's called City Safety. Other manufacturers, including Cadillac and Mercedes-Benz, have something similar. "The system works very simply from an engineering perspective," said Adam Kopstein, a safety and compliance manager at Volvo. "Making the car stop is easy; we've got the sensors and ABS. The trick is making sure it only does it when it's supposed to." Kopstein is a very funny guy, because after calling this an easy and simple system, he explained in detail how that trick is accomplished. Every manufacturer uses a different setup, so we'll use Subaru and Volvo's systems as examples of what's out there. Subaru's EyeSight, not surprisingly, uses two black and white cameras that work like your eyes to triangulate the speed and distance of the vehicle in front of you. They're mounted at the top of the windshield, and they scan every 0.1 seconds, looking for contrast with the background and vertical surfaces. The software is programmed to recognize several types of images, like the rear ends of vehicles,motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians. Volvo uses lidar (which is not related to the lion-tiger mashup we all know as a liger) in its City Safety system. Lidar is laser radar, and it sends out a signal that pings off objects in front of it to determine distance and speed. Since lidar works best at short range, Volvo also has a camera mounted in the windshield and radar in the bumper that work together at high speeds as part of its collision warning systemwith full braking capability. The radar can see several hundred yards in front of the car, but it

Chapter-9 Electronic Stability Control

Driving safety took a big step forward in the mid-1990s when electronic stability control was introduced. The German auto supplier Bosch developed the first system, and the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and BMW 7-series were the first cars to use the new safety and regulatory devices. It's been more than a decade since electronic stability control was first introduced, and it goes by many names, depending on the company. Audi calls it the Electronic Stability Program, or ESP; at Ford, it goes by Advance Trac. GM has Stabilitrak, and Porsche puts its stamp on the system by dubbing it Porsche Stability Management. But all of these systems, no matter their names, use high-tech sensors, the car's central computer and mechanical actions to assist in driving safely. We often read about high-performance cars having a tendency to understeer or oversteer; but the truth is, any car can veer off course, especially if the road is slippery. Understeer happens when the front wheels don't have enough traction and the car continues moving forward rather than turning. Oversteer is just the opposite: the car turns farther than the driver intended causing therear wheels to slide and the car to spin. ESC, as electronic stability control is often known, can help correct both of these situations.

Electronic Stability Control Explained

The electronic stability control system doesn't work all alone -- it uses the car's other safety and regulatory devices, like anti-lock braking and traction control, to correct problems before they become accidents. The center of the ESC system is also the center of the car: the yaw control sensor. It's almost always located as close to the very center of the car as possible. If you were sitting in the driver's seat, the yaw control sensor would be under your right elbow, somewhere between you and the passenger. But what the heck is "yaw?" If it sounds like something a pirate would say, that's because they probably would. Ships and cars both experience yaw, which is a movement around a vertical, or z, axis. It's as if the car were pinned like a butterfly in a display case, where the pin is the z axis. The yaw sensor is right at the center of the pin. If the ESC system detects that the car is swinging too far (or not far enough) around that up-and-down axis, it springs into action to assist. Using all the modern electronic systems at its disposal, the ESC can activate one or more individual brakes, depending on which wheel can increase driving safety the most, and control the throttle to lessen the speed at which the car is traveling. The sensor is looking for differences between the direction of the steering wheel and the direction the car is headed; the car's computer then makes the necessary corrections to bring the vehicle's direction of travel in line with what the driver wanted.

Chapter-10 Global Positioning System

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based satellite navigation system that provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites.[1] The system provides critical capabilities to military, civil and commercial users around the world. It is maintained by the United States government and is freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver. The GPS project was developed in 1973 to overcome the limitations of previous navigation systems,[2] integrating ideas from several predecessors, including a number of classified engineering design studies from the 1960s. GPS was created and realized by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and was originally run with 24 satellites. It became fully operational in 1995. Bradford Parkinson, Roger L. Easton, and Ivan A. Getting are credited with inventing it. Advances in technology and new demands on the existing system have now led to efforts to modernize the GPS system and implement the next generation of GPS III satellites and Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX).[3] Announcements from Vice President Al Gore and the White House in 1998 initiated these changes. In 2000, the U.S. Congress authorized the modernization effort, GPS III. In addition to GPS, other systems are in use or under development. The Russian Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) was developed contemporaneously with GPS, but suffered from incomplete coverage of the globe until the mid-2000s.[4] There are also the planned European Union Galileo positioning system, India's Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System and Chinese Compass navigation system.

Basic concept of GPS

A GPS receiver calculates its position by precisely timing the signals sent by GPS satellites high above the Earth. Each satellite continually transmits messages that include:

the time the message was transmitted and, satellite position at time of message transmission.

The receiver uses the messages it receives to determine the transit time of each message and computes the distance to each satellite using the speed of light. Each of these distances and satellites' locations defines a sphere. The receiver is on the surface of each of these spheres when the distances and the satellites' locations are correct. These distances and satellites' locations are used to compute the location of the receiver using thenavigation equations. This location is then displayed, perhaps with a moving map display or latitude and longitude; elevation or altitude information may be included, based on height above the geoid (e.g. EGM96).