Car With X-Ray Vision Enhances Road Safety By Tracking Unseen Pedestrians, Cyclists, Other Vehicles

With new technology, autonomous vehicles can now detect pedestrians, cyclists, and other vehicles through an X-ray vision.

According to a Mail Online report, such a technology may help the autonomous vehicle track the unseen and eventually avoid road accidents.

Experts in Australia are currently commercializing the said technology, identified as cooperative or collective perception or CP.

This innovation involves the installation of the so-called ITS stations or roadside information-sharing units equipped with sensors like lidar and cameras.

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(Photo : Wikimedia Commons)
Self-Driving or Autonomous Vehicle

X-Ray Style Vision

The technology provides every vehicle an X-ray-style vision that's seeing through buses to notice pedestrians or a van that rapidly moves around a corner that is about to run on a red light. For instance, at a busy intersection, vehicles would use the said units to share what they see with other vehicles.

In addition, autonomous vehicles are run by artificial intelligence (AI) that's trained to identify pedestrians to know when to stop and avoid a collision.

However, they can only be extensively adopted once they can be trusted to drive more safely than human drivers.

A 'Game Changer'

Consequently, teaching autonomous vehicles how to respond or react to unique situations to a similar capability as a human will be critical to their full rollout.

The Australian project is being commenced by iMOVE, a research center financially backed by the government, transport software company Cohda Wireless and the University of Sydney.

Their findings have been released in a final report that followed three years of research and development. Applications of the technology are currently being commercialized by Cohda, following the R&D project, which comprised trials on Sydney's public roads.

According to Professor Eduardo Nebot at the University of Sydney's Australian Centre for Field Robotics, this is a game-changer for both human-operated and autonomous vehicles, which the developers are hoping will significantly improve the safety and efficacy of road transportation.

Collective Perception

Collective Perception (CP), as described in a Gizmodo report, allows smart vehicles to break both the practical and physical limitations of onboard perception sensors.

In a test, a vehicle equipped with this technology could track a pedestrian visually congested or clogged by a building.

Nebot explained that it was attained seconds before its local perception sensors or the driver could see the same pedestrian around the corner, giving the driver extra time or navigation stack to respond to the danger.

In the real-time background, CP would enable a moving vehicle to know that a pedestrian is about to walk out in front of traffic, probably since they are too busy looking at their mobile device, be it a phone or tablet, and stop in time to prevent a collision.

In this sense, X-ray vision is an instance of how an autonomous vehicle would enhance the ability of a standard car operated by a human, a similar TechXplore report specified.

Cohda Wireless chief technical officer Professor Paul Alexander said this new technology has the potential to improve safety in seniors "with both human-operated and autonomous vehicles."

Related information about the X-ray vision in autonomous vehicles is shown on Information and News's YouTube video below:

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