published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

Un des buts de la recherche et du développement des systèmes de transport intelligents est d'augmenter le confort et la sécurité des passagers, tout en réduisant la consommation d'énergie, la pollution de l'air et le temps de déplacement. L'introduction de voitures complètement autonomes sur la voie publique nécessite la résolution d'un certain nombre de problèmes techniques et en particulier de disposer de modules de planification de trajectoire robustes. Ce travail de thèse s'inscrit dans ce cadre. Il propose une architecture modulaire pour la planification de trajectoire d'un véhicule autonome. La méthode permet de générer des trajectoires constituées de courbes interpolées adaptées à des environnements complexes comme des virages, des ronds-points, etc., tout en garantissant la sécurité et le confort des passagers. La prise en compte de l'incertitude des systèmes de perception, des limites physiques du véhicule, de la disposition des routes et des règles de circulation est aussi assurée dans le calcul de la trajectoire. L'algorithme est capable de modifier en temps réel la trajectoire prédéfinie de façon à éviter les collisions. Le calcul de la nouvelle trajectoire maintient les accélérations latérales à leur minimum, assurant ainsi le confort du passager. L'approche proposée a été évaluée et validée dans des environnements simulés et sur des véhicules réels. Cette méthode permet d'éviter les obstacles statiques et dynamiques repérés par le système de perception.Un système d'aide à la conduite pour le contrôle partagé basé sur cette architecture est introduit. Il prend en compte l'arbitrage, la surveillance et le partage de la conduite tout en maintenant le conducteur dans la boucle de contrôle. Il laisse le conducteur agir tant qu'il n'y a pas de danger et interagit avec le conducteur dans le cas contraire. L'algorithme se décompose donc en deux processus : 1) évaluation du risque et, s'il y a un risque avéré 2) partage du contrôle à l'aide de signaux haptiques via le volant.La méthode de planification de trajectoire présentée dans cette thèse est modulaire et générique. Elle peut être intégrée facilement dans toute architecture d'un véhicule autonome. / Developments in the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) field show promising results at increasing passengers comfort and safety, while decreasing energy consumption, emissions and travel time. In road transportation, the appearance of automated vehicles is significantly aiding drivers by reducing some driving-associated tedious tasks. However, there is still a long way to go before making the transition between automated vehicles (i.e. vehicles with some automated features) and autonomous vehicles on public roads (i.e. fully autonomous driving), specially from the motion planning point of view. With this in mind, the present PhD thesis proposes the design of a generic modular architecture for automated vehicles motion planning. It implements and improves curve interpolation techniques in the motion planning literature by including comfort as the main design parameter, addressing complex environments such as turns, intersections and roundabouts. It will be able to generate suitable trajectories that consider measurements' incertitude from the perception system, vehicle’s physical limits, the road layout and traffic rules. In case future collision states are detected, the proposed approach is able to change---in real-time---the current trajectory and avoid the obstacle in front. It permits to avoid obstacles in conflict with the current trajectory of the ego-vehicle, considering comfort limits and developing a new trajectory that keeps lateral accelerations at its minimum. The proposed approach is tested in simulated and real urban environments, including turns and two-lane roundabouts with different radii. Static and dynamic obstacles are considered as to face and interact with other road actors, avoiding collisions when detected. The functional architecture is also tested in shared control and arbitration applications, focusing in keeping the driver in the control loop to addition the system's supervision over drivers’ knowledge and skills in the driving task. The control sharing advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) is proposed in two steps: 1) risk assessment of the situation in hand, based on the optimal trajectory and driving boundaries identified by the motion planning architecture and; 2) control sharing via haptic signals sent to the driver through the steering wheel. The approach demonstrates the modularity of the functional architecture as it proposes a general solution for some of today's unsolved challenges in the automated driving field.

Os objetivos deste trabalho são dois: avaliar a percepção da sociedade e dos especialistas em transporte sobre os benefícios alcançados com a implantação de sistemas de transporte público urbano sobre trilhos e verificar se a percepção dos especialistas é alinhada com a percepção da sociedade. O trabalho foi desenvolvido a partir de uma pesquisa bibliográfica para identificação dos benefícios do transporte público sobre trilhos. Após definidos os benefícios foi aplicada uma pesquisa, de caráter exploratório, utilizando a escala de Likert, à sociedade, mais especificamente a alunos de graduação de cursos universitários na região metropolitana de São Paulo num total de 433 respondentes, distribuídos em 7 locais distintos. Em seguida foi realizada uma pesquisa junto a especialistas em transporte, com utilização de uma planilha para avaliação dos benefícios com base no Método de Análise Hierárquica - MAH. Na pesquisa com especialistas obteve-se 34 planilhas distribuídas em 4 grupos distintos. Os resultados mostram que a sociedade e os especialistas possuem uma percepção bastante positiva dos benefícios gerados pela implantação de sistemas de transporte público urbano sobre trilhos, havendo, no entanto, diferenças sensíveis nas avaliações, que refletem na ordem de importância dos benefícios. / The objectives of this work are, over all, two: evaluate the society´s and transportation specialists the perception on the benefits, reached with the implantation of urban public transport on tracks systems and to verify if the perception of the specialists is aligned up with the perception of the society. The work was developed from a bibliographical research that had the goal to identify the benefits of the public transport on tracks. After defined the benefits the research was applied to the society using the Likert´s scale, in exploratory way, more specifically the graduation´s pupils of university courses in the metropolitan region of São Paulo in a total of 433 respondents, distributed in seven distinct places. After that was carried through a research next to transportation´s specialists, with the resource of a spread sheet for evaluation of the benefits on the basis of the Analytic Hierarchical Process - AHP. About the research with specialists, one got 34 spread sheets distributed in four distinct groups. The results show that the society and the specialists possess a sufficiently positive perception about the benefits generated for the implantation of urban public transport on tracks systems, having, however, sensible differences in the evaluations, that they reflect in the order of the benefits importance.

Traffic congestion is one of the most concerning issues in the transportation system. Recurrent congestion and non-recurrent congestion are explored in this research. This research will investigate one of the most concerning issues with the transportation system, congestion, using an overall delay analysis study. A developed fused database program was used to access and analyze the complete database data. Two online databases were used for obtaining traffic, incident and weather data. Eleven different scenarios such as peak-hours, rain scenario, incidents scenario, and work zone scenario were developed for the analysis. An overall delay study was performed on all scenarios to find the impact recurring and non-recurring congestion on the highway. The results of this research were interesting for future adjustment and improvements on the two segments of highways selected. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Research on connected vehicles (CV) has attracted attention in the last decade due to numerous potential applications and challenges related to exchange of information between the vehicles (and infrastructure). Most of the relevant studies focus on these applications and challenges with the help of novel or existing simulation frameworks. The simulation framework often contains the mobility and communication components, and these components are frequently simplified. In this study, the authors aim to provide the detailed information for developing a fully V2X capable infrastructure within the lab environment. The physical components of the proposed infrastructure include: (i) userdriven Driving Simulator (DS) with the embedded micro-simulation tool (MS); (ii) external traffic signal controller (TSC); (iii) Road Side Unit (RSU) and omnidirectional antenna attached to RSU; (iv) On-Board Unit (OBU) that is integrated within DS‘s cockpit. The proposed framework can be used for advanced applications in the context of connected vehicles. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Plataformas móveis, como smartphones, tablets e também veículos, têm cada vez mais possibilitado a coleta e análise de dados de seu entorno. Essa oportunidade de sensoriamento de diferentes fenômenos oferece maior cobertura espaço-temporal a menor custo em relação às técnicas tradicionais. O dinamismo dessa abordagem traz desafios relacionados ao posicionamento desses sensores e ao georreferenciamento das informações coletadas. Desta forma, a presente pesquisa tem como objetivo propor método orientativo de especificação de técnicas de posicionamento no contexto do uso do veículo enquanto sensor. Inicialmente, a partir de levantamento bibliográfico, caracteriza-se a evolução do conceito de veículo-sensor e seu emprego no sensoriamento da fluidez do tráfego, das condições do pavimento, de qualidade do ar, entre outras variáveis. Descreve-se o estado da arte nesse campo de pesquisa, identificando lacunas e pontos a serem mais bem estudados. Em um segundo momento, identificando o posicionamento como tópico pouco discutido nesse contexto, o trabalho dedica-se à definição de método orientativo de especificação de sistemas de posicionamento para veículossensores, tendo em conta os requisitos associados às diferentes variáveis a serem sensoriadas. Ao fim, apresenta-se estudo de campo referente ao uso de veículos na identificação de ocorrência de lombadas, empregando as ferramentas estabelecidas nessa dissertação e pormenorizando a discussão do sistema de posicionamento. Dessa forma, o trabalho contribui para a caracterização dos sistemas de sensoriamento baseados em veículos e a identificação do posicionamento como parâmetro fundamental para a qualidade desses sistemas. / Mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and also vehicles have increasingly enabled gathering and analysing data from its environment. This opportunity of sensing different phenomena offers greater spatiotemporal coverage at less cost when compared to the traditional techniques. The dynamics of this approach has challenges related to the positioning of this sensors and the georeferencing of sensed data. Thus, this research aims to propose an orientative method to specify the positioning system for use with vehicles working as mobile sensors. Firstly, by doing a literature review, the purpose is to characterize the evolution of the concept of vehicle as a mobile sensor and its use in sensing traffic conditions, road conditions, air quality and other variables. The state of the art in this research field is described and the gaps and open questions are identified. In a second moment, after identifying the positioning in this context as an understudied area, this research will work on discussing an orientative method to specify the positioning system considering specificities and requirements associated with the different sensored phenomena. At the end, this work describes an exploratory study using a vehicle to identify road bumps, applying the tools defined in the method and detailing the discussion about the positioning system. Therefore, this work contributes to the characterization of sensing systems based on vehicles and the identification of the vehicular positioning as a fundamental parameter for the quality of these systems.

Os objetivos deste trabalho são dois: avaliar a percepção da sociedade e dos especialistas em transporte sobre os benefícios alcançados com a implantação de sistemas de transporte público urbano sobre trilhos e verificar se a percepção dos especialistas é alinhada com a percepção da sociedade. O trabalho foi desenvolvido a partir de uma pesquisa bibliográfica para identificação dos benefícios do transporte público sobre trilhos. Após definidos os benefícios foi aplicada uma pesquisa, de caráter exploratório, utilizando a escala de Likert, à sociedade, mais especificamente a alunos de graduação de cursos universitários na região metropolitana de São Paulo num total de 433 respondentes, distribuídos em 7 locais distintos. Em seguida foi realizada uma pesquisa junto a especialistas em transporte, com utilização de uma planilha para avaliação dos benefícios com base no Método de Análise Hierárquica - MAH. Na pesquisa com especialistas obteve-se 34 planilhas distribuídas em 4 grupos distintos. Os resultados mostram que a sociedade e os especialistas possuem uma percepção bastante positiva dos benefícios gerados pela implantação de sistemas de transporte público urbano sobre trilhos, havendo, no entanto, diferenças sensíveis nas avaliações, que refletem na ordem de importância dos benefícios. / The objectives of this work are, over all, two: evaluate the society´s and transportation specialists the perception on the benefits, reached with the implantation of urban public transport on tracks systems and to verify if the perception of the specialists is aligned up with the perception of the society. The work was developed from a bibliographical research that had the goal to identify the benefits of the public transport on tracks. After defined the benefits the research was applied to the society using the Likert´s scale, in exploratory way, more specifically the graduation´s pupils of university courses in the metropolitan region of São Paulo in a total of 433 respondents, distributed in seven distinct places. After that was carried through a research next to transportation´s specialists, with the resource of a spread sheet for evaluation of the benefits on the basis of the Analytic Hierarchical Process - AHP. About the research with specialists, one got 34 spread sheets distributed in four distinct groups. The results show that the society and the specialists possess a sufficiently positive perception about the benefits generated for the implantation of urban public transport on tracks systems, having, however, sensible differences in the evaluations, that they reflect in the order of the benefits importance.

Demand responsive transportation is a variable route service of passengers or freight from specific origin(s) to destination(s) in response to the request of users. Operational planning of DRT system encompasses the methods to provide efficient service to the passengers and to the system operators. These methods cover the assignments of vehicles to transportation requests and vehicle routings under various constraints such as environmental conditions, traffic and service limitations. Advances in the information and communication technologies, such as the Internet, mobile communication devices, GIS, GPS, Intelligent Transportation Systems have led to a significantly complex and highly dynamical decision making environment. Recent approaches to DRT operational planning are based on "closed information loop" to achieve a higher level of automation, increased flexibility and efficiency. Intelligent and effective use of the available information in such a complex decision making environment requires the application of formal modeling and control approaches, which are robust, modular and computationally efficient. In this study, DRT systems are modeled as Discrete Event Systems using Finite Automata formalism and DRT real time control is addressed using Supervisory Control Theory. Two application scenarios are considered; the first is based on air-charter service and illustrates uncontrolled system model and operational specification synthesis. The automatic synthesis of centralized and modular supervisors is demonstrated. The second scenario is a mission critical application based on emergency evacuation problem. Decentralized supervisory control architecture suitable for accommodating the real-time contingencies is presented. Conditions for parallel computation of local supervisors are specified and the computational advantages of alternative supervisory control architectures are discussed. Discrete event system modeling and supervisory control theory are well established and powerful mathematical tools. In this dissertation, they are shown to be suitable for expressing the modeling and control requirements of complex and dynamic applications in DRT. The modeling and control approaches described herein, coupled with the mature body of research literature in Discrete Event Systems and Supervisory Control Theory, facilitate logical analysis of these complex systems and provide the necessary framework for development of intelligent decision making tools for real time operational planning and control in a broad range of DRT applications.

Dans ce travail, nous avons présenté notre contribution portant sur la modélisation et le contrôle a priori de congestion des réseaux de carrefours signalisés. De point de vue de la modélisation, nous avons introduit un nouveau regard sur les systèmes de transport en proposant un premier travail sur la manière dont les liens se tissent entre ces systèmes et la thermodynamique. Le point de vue dominant est l'assimilation des véhicules à l'énergie fournie ou/et échangée entre les intersections signalisées. L'avantages majeur de la modélisation thermodynamique est l'introduction de la notion d'entropie du transport mesurant le désordre du système. Elle peut être considérée non seulement comme un moyen pour la compréhension des phénomènes du trafic, mais aussi comme un outil d'évaluation surtout lorsqu'il s'agit de traiter des réseaux de grande taille. De point de vue du contrôle, nous nous sommes intéressés essentiellement à un travail en amont permettant d'éviter la congestion en forçant les files d'attente à ne pas dépasser le niveau du trafic correspondant à l'optimum opérationnel des lignes. Nous avons traité le problème de deux façons différentes. La première fait appel à l’approche de la commande dissipative. Nous avons exploité cet outil pour arriver à des résultats théoriques dont la vérification permet de conclure sur la possibilité de dissiper les véhicules au moyen d'une action de la commande adéquate. L'existence d'une commande dissipative est caractérisée par la faisabilité de certaines inégalités matricielles linéaires (LMI). La deuxième façon de traiter notre problème de commande fait appel à la commande H∞. Nous avons tiré profit de cet outil pour développer des résultats assurant l'invariance positive en boucle fermée d'un domaine ellipsoïdal contenu dans l'ensemble des contraintes. Le test d'existence et le calcul d'une loi de commande robuste par retour d'état peut alors se faire de façon simple par la résolution d'un problème de programmation linéaire convexe. Enfin, ses travaux ont été appliqués sur deux types de réseaux de carrefours, artériel et en grille afin de montrer l'intérêt des résultats. / In this work, we have presented a thermodynamic point of view for the transportation network. Analogies have been drawn between thermodynamic and transportation systems by considering traffic lanes as thermodynamic sub-systems and the vehicles as the abstract energy supplied to them. In addition, the concepts of thermal capacity and temperature are also introduced into transportation context to correspond to lane capacity and occupancy respectively. Then, it has been demonstrated that the first law of thermodynamics corresponds to the conservation of vehicles. It is also demonstrated that the transportation network can have a similar notion of entropy. Such transportation entropy is a measure of disorder of the system and hence may provide deep insight in the analysis of transportation control problems. In particular, this work has presented a dissipativity phenomenon of transportation entropy that reduces the system disorder and hence renders the system better organized. Though this phenomenon doesn’t exist naturally in transportation context, the ways to construct feedback control strategies have been proposed to achieve such objective by means of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs). However, since transportation systems involve massive complex human activities, there exist substantial unpredictable uncertainties of the traffic demands. In this context, we have proposed a robust controller for disturbance attenuation of transportation network. The errors between input flows and the nominal ones are considered as disturbances and a constrained H∞ control has been formulated in terms of maximization of the tolerance under control constraints. The problem of disturbance attenuation is solved by means of a convex optimization with Linear Matrix Inequality. Finally, two types of networks (arterial and grid) are carried out to illustrate the performances of our strategies.

This thesis presents a framework for motor vehicle detection-tracking surveillance systems. Given an optimized object detection template, the feasibility and effectiveness of the methodology is considered for vehicle counting applications, implementing both a filtering operation of false detection, based on the speed variability in each segment of traffic state, and an occlusion handling technique which considers the unusual affine transformation of tracking subspace, as well as its highly fluctuating averaged acceleration data. The result presents the overall performance considering the trade-off relationship between true detection rate and false detection rate. The filtering operation achieved significant success in removing the majority of non-vehicle elements that do not move like a vehicle. The occlusion handling technique employed also improved the systems performance, contributing counts that would otherwise be lost. For all video samples tested, the proposed framework obtained high correct count (>93% correct counting rate) while simultaneously minimizing the false count rate. For future research, the author recommends the use of more sophisticated filters for specific sets of conditions as well as the implementation of discriminative classifier for detecting different occlusion cases.