Contact name
Alejandro Badolato
Telephone number
+34916216817
Website
Good Practice
Structured paint for road digitization
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- English
Structured paint for road digitization
Initiative details
07/04/2022 to 11/05/2025
Please describe the main road safety challenges/problems you have addressed or are addressing.
We are addressing several different problems that can be summarized in the sections VI.A to VI.C of the paper attached . In my opinion, the most important problem regarding safety is VI.C: Improve Pedestrian Safety in Urban Scenarios.
Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) is mandatory for all European vehicles manufactured after 2021. ISA uses GPS or optical cameras to detect the speed limit and, in case of overspeed, alert the driver. ISA is a great approach for improving safety, especially pedestrian safety in urban scenarios. The speed limit inside a City is typically 30 km/h. Unfortunately, this speed is still too fast for protecting pedestrians when they are crossing. If a distracted driver arrives at a crossing at 30 km/h, the pedestrian will not have enough response time to avoid the collision. The small infrastructure adaptation that we propose, enables us to set a variable speed limit on every meter of lane stretch. This means that next generation of ISA would adapt the speed on every meter which could be 30 km/h at the beginning of the street but in the surroundings of the pedestrian crossing can be progressively adapted to 20, 10, 6 and 4 km/h when it is just over the crossing. This speed is similar to the speed of the pedestrians and they will have an opportunity to avoid the collision. At the same time, inappropriate accelerations can be avoided with the same approach for reducing pollutant emissions.
Project activities
If you work together with external partners, list the most important partners and briefly describe their role.
Alsa (National Express) is tha company that provides public service of buses in León City and is adapting its bus fleet for testing the solution.
Please describe the project activities you carried/are carrying out and the time period over which these were implemented.
Infrastructure digitization is a must for improving ADAS systems. We have developed an affordable, feasible and reliable solution. It consists in encoding every 10 cm of road stretch by using structured paint. As a result, vehicles equipped with the appropriate radar sensor can read the encoded track and determine its position with extreme accuracy. This extreme accuracy is crucial for improving reliability of ALKS/LDWS when perception fails.
The adaption consists in deploying 6mm high paint drops along the road that encodes data in a similar way as the Braille system. The track deployed along the center of the lane is black color and remains invisible to regular drivers. It encodes a univocal pseudo random code that digitizes every 10 cm if road stretch. A linear array of Mm-wave radars installed in the under body of the vehicle along a transversal axis obtains a high-detail three-dimensional image of the surface's asphalt while the vehicle is moving and reads the encoded track. As a result, the vehicle is located with 1cm accuracy in a reliable, secure, and low-cost manner. This precise vehicle location is crucial for achieving a progressive Intelligent Speed Assistant (ISA) in urban scenarios, for improving reliability of the Automatic Lane Keep Assistance Systems (ALKS) and for supporting unmanned platooning.
List the actions you carried/are carrying out
Date
Wednesday, 11 May, 2022
Evaluation
What has been the effect of the activities?
We have demonstrated the ability of radar devices for reading this new 3D land markings in controlled scenarios and we are just launching our first pilot where public buses will be adapted for reading a digitized street in León City (Spain). It is expected to install this system in 30 vehicles of Amazon also in León before the end of year.
Please briefly explain why your initiative is a good example of improving road safety.
Buses now can use a precise intelligent Speed Assistant that adapt continuously the speed of the vehicle according to de position. In this way, vehicles do not have a constant speed limit for a specific stetch. They have a pre-recorded speed/acceleration curve along the path that improves pedestrian safety in critical areas (such as pedestrian crossings, crossings, schools ....) but also minimices pollutant emissions avoiding inappropriate accelerations patterns.
How have you shared information about your project and its results?
The attached document is the draft that we have submitted to Transactions on Intelligent Transport Systems (IEEE Q1) and we are still waiting for publication approval.
