Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Autonomous vehicles currently dominate the automobile field for their impact on humanity and society. Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV’s) are vehicles that use different communication technologies to communicate with other vehicles, infrastructure, the cloud, etc. With the information received from the sensors present, the vehicles analyze and take necessary steps for smooth, collision-free driving. This the sis talks about the cruise control system along with the intersection collision avoidance system based on Petri net models. It consists of two internal controllers for velocity and distance control, respectively, and three external ones for collision avoidance. Fault-tolerant redundant controllers are designed to keep these three controllers in check. The model is built using a PN toolbox and tested for various scenarios. The model is also validated, and its distinct properties are analyzed.

Aircraft industry is constantly facing the need to increase security not only in the case of large machines, but also in the small aircraft. Many systems were established in order to inform the pilot of the impending hazard, where appropriate, about the location of the other aircraft. The main objective is to establish a facility which uses global position system for determining the position and imparts coordinates using wireless networks for subsequent determination of collision. The functions of satellites and GPS receivers, sending wireless data and collision calculation and synchronization of individual modules is described in detail.

A dynamic modeling framework was established to predict the position and alignment (turning angle) of a tractor-dolly towing system receiving different driver inputs. This framework consists of three primary components: (1) a state space model to determine position and velocity of the system through Newton’s second law; (2) a model that transfers angular acceleration through each successive towed vehicle; and (3) a polygon model to draw an instantaneous shape of the vehicle representing its location and alignment. Input parameters of this model include initial conditions of the system, real time location of a reference point that can be determined through a beacon and radar system, and instantaneous accelerations, which come from driver maneuvers found on a data collecting system installed on the tractor. The purpose is to create an output that presents the position of the dolly vehicles with reference to the tractor at any time point.

Collision avoidance is an essential capability for autonomous and assisted-driving ground vehicles. In this work, we developed a novel model predictive control based intelligent collision avoidance (CA) algorithm for a multi-trailer industrial ground vehicle implemented on a General Purpose Graphical Processing Unit (GPGPU). The CA problem is formulated as a multi-objective optimal control problem and solved using a limited look-ahead control scheme in real-time. Through hardware-in-the-loop-simulations and experimental results obtained in this work, we have demonstrated that the proposed algorithm, using NVIDA’s CUDA framework and the NVIDIA Jetson TX2 development platform, is capable of dynamically assisting drivers and maintaining the vehicle a safe distance from the detected obstacles on-thely. We have demonstrated that a GPGPU, paired with an appropriate algorithm, can be the key enabler in relieving the computational burden that is commonly associated with model-based control problems and thus make them suitable for real-time applications.

Unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) pose a potential threat to general aviation/commercial aircraft as UASs are increasingly incorporated into the National Airspace System. This overarching research is aimed at addressing the severity of a UAS mid-air collision with another aircraft. This study is primarily focused on the development of a finite element (FE) model of a ~4 lb fixed-wing UAS (FW-UAS) which will be used to evaluate the severity of small UAS mid-air collisions to manned aircraft. A series of impact tests were performed at the University of Dayton Research Institute - Impact Physics Lab, to study the impact behavior of the high-density components of the FW-UAS (i.e., motor, and battery). For each of the tests, a simulation was set up with the same initial conditions, and boundary conditions as the physical test and the same output parameters were correlated with the test results. A series of numerical stability checks were also performed using the validated FW-UAS FE model to ensure the stability of the explicit dynamic procedures. Simulated impacts between the FW-UAS FE model and targets (deformable flat plate, rigid flat plate, and rigid knife-edge) were performed as stability checks. The FW-UAS FE model developed in this work facilitated the evaluation of the severity of FW-UAS mid-air collision to commercial and business jet airframes performed at and in conjunction with National Institute for Aviation Research. A series of worst-case scenarios involving impacts between the FW-UAS and commercial narrow-body transport and business jet airframes were simulated. For each simulated impact, an impact severity index value was assigned to characterize the relative threat to a given aircraft. In addition, a UAS frangibility study was performed to assess key UAS design features that result in reduced damage to target air vehicles. A “pusher” engine configuration was modeled where the high-density motor is located aft of the UAS’s forward fuselage. Positioning the high-density motor in the aft fuselage played an important role in reducing the impact damage severity.

In this research, a tribocharging model based on the prominent condenser model was used in combination with an Eulerian-Lagrangian CFD model to simulate particle tribocharging in particle-laden flows. The influence of different parameters on particle-wall interactions during particle transport in a particle-laden pipe flow was elucidated. An artificial neural network was developed for predicting particle-wall collision numbers based on a database obtained through CFD simulations. The particle-wall collision number from the CFD model was validated against experimental data in the literature. The tribocharging and CFD models were coupled with the experimental tribocharging data to estimate the contact potential difference of powders, which is a function of contact surfaces' work functions and depends on the physicochemical properties of materials. While the contact potential difference between the particles and wall is an essential parameter in the tribocharging models, the accurate measurement of the property is a complex process requiring a highly controlled environment and special equipment. The results from this research also confirm that particle tribocharging is very much dependant on the particle-wall collision number influenced by various parameters, such as particle size and density, air velocity, and pipe dimensions. Plotting the experimentally measured charge-to-mass ratios against the calculated contact potential differences for samples with different protein contents uncovered a linear trend, which opens a novel approach for protein quantification of powders for a given particle size. Therefore, an algorithm is proposed for rapid quantification of protein content and particle size determination of samples during transport in particle-laden flows based on the triboelectric charge measurement. The algorithm requires a CFD-based artificial neural network to estimate the particle-wall interactions based on the hydrodynamic characteristics of the particles and flow systems. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Automobile accident reconstruction has been facilitated by the development of computer based modules to allow evaluation of evidence gathered at the accident scenes. Although the computer modules are based in fundamental physical laws, an understanding of these laws by the user is required for proper application of the computer model in a given accident scenario. Vehicle collision analysis techniques generally separate the collision into three phases: pre-impact, impact, and post impact. The intent of the research is to provide a generalized model to reconstruct two dimensional impact problems in the area of accident reconstruction. There are currently two modeling techniques used to reconstruct the impact phase: the first technique relying exclusively on impulse-momentum theory coupled with friction and restitution, while the second method combines impulse momentum with a relationship between crush geometry and energy loss. Because each method requires very different inputs, the literature would have us believe that both methods are different. We will show that both methods are derived using the same fundamental physical principles and for any given accident scenario, both methods will provide identical results. Each method will be presented in the form of a MathCAD spread sheet that will allow the user to reconstruct a wide variety of accidents controlling just a few parameters (i.e. mass, rotational inertia, angle of approach, etc...). Both methods will provide step by step graphical representation to assure a solid approach to physical fundamentals. The governing equations to the generalized energy approach will be non-dimensionalized and used to define all of the changes in energy (i.e. also referred to as an impulse in power) as a function of a characteristic velocity. Finally, different methods to consistently determine the direction of the force will be presented when additional information from the accident scene is provided.

Background. Skeletal animation is a technique used for displaying animated movement that uses bones in a hierarchy to get a structure; these bones are transformed based on their parent bones. Vertices in a mesh are connected to one or more bones with a weight, and the vertices will move based on the bone transformation, creating an animation. Objectives. In this study, a technique called "Particle-Oriented Bounding Box Skeletal Animation", (POBBSA) is proposed. Tests were conducted with the aim of comparing traditional skeletal animation and POBBSA based on performance and quality. With the primary aim of determining if the POBBSA technique is a solution for displaying suspended sediment-based characters. Methods. The two animation approaches were implemented with the intention to conduct performance tests based on memory usage and frames per second and quality tests based on feedback from a survey. The POBBSA will differ in its way of using oriented bounding boxes and particles with a certain style of movement. Results. The POBBSA approach needs more computational power to run than traditional skeletal animation, but its memory consumption can also be lower than traditional skeletal animation. The results from the survey were mostly positive, but artifacted particles appearing on the character were also mentioned by multiple survey participants. Conclusions. Performance-wise, the POBBSA is slower than traditional skeletal animation but has a slight advantage in memory usage. When comparing POBBSA and skeletal animation in terms of quality, it appears that for the current style, POBBSA works best for cuboid characters to avoid the artifacted particles that occur in complicated models.

This thesis investigates the problem of sensors used with mobile robots. Firstly, a colour sensor is considered, for its ability to detect objects having the three primary colours Red, Green and Blue (RGB). Secondly, an accelerometer was investigated, from which velocity was derived from the raw data using numerical integration. The purpose of the design and development of the sensors was to use them for robotic navigation and collision avoidance. This report presents the results of experiments carried out on the colour sensor and the accelerometer. A discussion of the results and some conclusions are also presented. It proved feasible to achieve the goal of detecting colours successfully but only for a limited distance. The accelerometer proved reliable but is not yet being applied in real time. Both the colour sensor and the accelerometer proved to be inexpensive. Some recommendations are made to improve both the colour sensor and the accelerometer sensors.

The tibia is a frequent site of injury in frontal automotive collisions. The bulk of experimental cadaveric studies on injury tolerance assume load is applied in line with the leg’s long axis, leaving non-standard postures largely uninvestigated. The purpose of this work was to study the effects of non-standard postures on the tibia’s injury tolerance. A pneumatic system was designed to facilitate impact testing. This system allows the user to fire a projectile of variable mass towards a specimen at a range of velocities by varying the supplied air pressure. Impact tests were performed using pairs of isolated cadaveric tibias. Within each pair of specimens, two postures were compared by varying the angle of the bone’s long axis relative to the direction of impact, representing knee extension and corresponding plantarflexion. It was found that the specimens held further from the axial posture sustained injury at lower forces. Two commonly-used Anthropomorphic Test Device legforms were impacted in these non-standard postures. New load limits were proposed for the use of these devices in off-axis impact testing. In order to compare directly with the loads measured by the legforms, it was necessary to measure forces and moments internal to the bone’s long axis. A non-invasive load estimation method was developed and tested using strain measured from the surface of four specimens. The method performed poorly under impact conditions, but may be refined in the future. Quantifying the effect of posture on injury risk in the tibia allows for the refinement of existing injury criteria. Ultimately, this can be used to enhance the design of protective devices to reduce the incidence of tibia fractures in automotive collisions. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc) / Fractures of the tibia (the shin bone) are common in automotive collisions, and often lead to long-term impairment. Experimental studies on these kinds of injuries are usually performed with the lower leg aligned with the direction of impact, which does not reflect the range of postures an occupant may assume during a crash. Cadaveric tibias were subjected to impact loading in two different postures. It was found that the specimens held further from an axial posture sustained fractures at lower forces. Two commonly-used crash test dummy legs were also impacted in these non-standard postures to test their performance. Suggestions were made for new load limits to be used with these devices in non-standard postures. The finding that leg posture has an effect on injury risk in the tibia can be used in the future to design and evaluate better protective devices and ultimately reduce the incidence of these injuries.