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The problem of dynamic autonomous agent placement for tracking moving targets arises in many real-life applications, such as rescue operations, security, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The objective of this thesis is to develop a distributed hierarchical approach to address this problem. After the approach is developed, it is tested on a number of urban surveillance scenarios. The proposed approach views the placement problem as a multi-tiered architecture entailing modules for low-level sensor data preprocessing and fusion, decentralized decision support, knowledge building, and centralized decision support. This thesis focuses upon the modules of decentralized decision support and knowledge building. The decentralized decision support module requires a great deal of coordination among agents to achieve the mission objectives. The module entails two classes of distributed algorithms: non-model-based algorithms and model-based algorithms. The first class is used as a place holder while a model is built to describe agents knowledge about target behaviors. After the model is built and evaluated, agents switch to the model-based algorithms. To apply the approach to urban environments, urban terrain zones are classified, and the problem is mathematically formulated for two different types of urban terrain, namely low-rise, widely spaced and high-rise, closely spaced zones. An instance of each class of algorithms is developed for each of the two types of urban terrain. The algorithms are designed to run in a distributed fashion to address scalability and fault tolerance issues. The class of model-based algorithms includes a distributed model-based algorithm for dealing with evasive targets. The algorithm is designed to improve its performance over time as it learns from past experience how to deal with evasive targets. Apart from the algorithms, a model estimation module is developed to build motion models online from sensor observations. The approach is evaluated through a set of simulation experiments inspired from real-life scenarios. Experimental results reveal the superiority of the developed algorithms over existing ones and the applicability of the online model-building method. Therefore, it is concluded that the overall distributed approach is capable of handling agent placement or surveillance applications in urban environments among other applications.

This diploma thesis focuses on incorrect inflation and incorrect use of tires in extreme situations. In the first part, a search of previously created works is reported. This is followed by the elaboration of the basic theory, which describes the driving dynamics of the vehicle, braking and construction, marking, wear and inflation of tires. The next part is the measurement and evaluation of the effect of incorrect inflation and use of tires. Braking deceleration and evasive maneuvers were performed as tests. The third part is an evaluation and summary of the situation.

The steadily increasing amount of malware puts an even larger amount of work required to analyze all the gathered samples. The current methods of analyzing malware come with their downsides such as inefficiency as a manual analysis requires a human or dynamic analysis that could be considered unreliable. The usage of dynamic malware analysis where the malware is executed in a sandbox environment is proven to be an efficient method of analyzing malware. As the techniques used to protect the system evolves, so do the attacking techniques. Some of the malware uses advanced evasion techniques to avoid detection from these sandbox analyzing environments, which causes the malware to be cleared and later executed in a real, target environment. These evasion techniques can find certain artifacts in the system which is inherent to a sandbox environment. Previous studies mention the lack of transparency between the virtual and physical host to be one of the bigger giveaways for the malware when looking for artifacts. There is also a grey area regarding how the malware acts and behaves, trying to assess and figure out if it is in a sandbox or not. This paper focused on creating a sandboxing analyzing environment within a physical machine, using all the dead giveaways by keeping the system as minimal as possible with only analyzing tools and software, in other words creating a fake sandbox environment. 12 samples of malware were analyzed in the two environments and the results show that the malware interacts more within the physical system and uses different APIs, System calls, and dlls compared to the virtual system. The malware samples, after its running process, resulted in similar activities on both systems which indicated that mimicking a sandbox could be effective to deter evasive malware.

We investigated after effects of automation in take-over scenarios in a high-end moving-base driving simulator. Drivers performed evasive manoeuvres encountering a blocked lane in highway driving. We compared the performance of drivers 1) during manual driving, 2) after automated driving with eyes on the road while performing the cognitively demanding n-back task, and 3) after automated driving with eyes off the road performing the visually demanding SuRT task. Both minimum time to collision (TTC) and minimum clearance towards the obstacle disclosed a substantial number of near miss events and are regarded as valuable surrogate safety metrics in evasive manoeuvres. TTC proved highly sensitive to the applied definition of colliding paths, and we prefer robust solutions using lane position while disregarding heading. The extended time to collision (ETTC) which takes into account acceleration was close to the more robust conventional TTC. In line with other publications, the initial steering or braking intervention was delayed after using automation compared to manual driving. This resulted in lower TTC values and stronger steering and braking actions. Using automation, effects of cognitive distraction were similar to visual distraction for the intervention time with effects on the surrogate safety metric TTC being larger with visual distraction. However the precision of the evasive manoeuvres was hardly affected with a similar clearance towards the obstacle, similar overshoots and similar excursions to the hard shoulder. Further research is needed to validate and complement the current simulator based results with human behaviour in real world driving conditions. Experiments with real vehicles can disclose possible systematic differences in behaviour, and naturalistic data can serve to validate surrogate safety measures like TTC and obstacle clearance in evasive manoeuvres.

Der Arbeitsalltag von Sportlehrkräften ist durch ein hohes Belastungspotenzial gekennzeichnet. Neben einem hohen Lärmpegel, Mehrfachanforderungen in einem häufig wechselnden Ordnungs-rahmen, körperlichen Belastungen, der stetigen Verletzungsgefahr und fehlenden Pausen- und Erholungszeiten wird in Befragungen vor allem das hohe Konfliktpotenzial durch Fehlverhalten und Motivationsprobleme von Schülerinnen und Schülern als besonders belastende Faktoren genannt. Eine angemessene Bewältigung von Konflikten und weiteren beruflichen Belastungen stellt eine wichtige Grundlage für die Wahrung der Gesundheit der Lehrkräfte dar. Ein konstruktiver Umgang mit Konflikten ist zudem ein wichtiger Bestandteil der Förderung des sozial-kooperativen Verhal-tens der Schülerinnen und Schüler. Aufgrund der besonderen Belastungssituation, die zusätzlich durch fehlende Anerkennung der Arbeitsleistung der Sportlehrkräfte verschärft wird, entsteht ein Bedürfnis nach Handlungssicherheit und Routine. Im Zentrum dieser Arbeit wird das Phänomen des evasiven Bewältigungsverhaltens analysiert. Evasives Verhalten zeigt eine Person, wenn sie auf Konflikte nicht reagiert, diese ignoriert, Aus-flüchte sucht oder Schwierigkeiten bereits im Vorfeld präventiv vermeidet. Grundsätzlich stellt evasives Verhalten eine wertneutrale Bewältigungsstrategie dar, deren Einsatz auch im Lehrerbe-ruf in manchen Situationen sinnvoll ist. So ist sogar davon abzuraten jeden kleinen Konflikt, jede Kleinigkeit aufzugreifen um den Ablauf des Unterrichts nicht durch Kleinlichkeiten zu behindern oder herauszustellen, dass man trotz Hindernissen in der Lage ist, am eigenen Konzept festzuhal-ten. Während in diesem Fall eine pädagogische Legitimation vorliegt, kann evasives Verhalten jedoch auch Element einer „Überlebensstrategie“ sein, bei dem Konflikte vermieden und ignoriert werden, um kurzfristig eine Entlastung zu erzielen. Meist erreicht man durch diese Verhaltenswei-se jedoch nur den Aufschub eines Konflikts, der später, teils in verschärfter Form, wieder auftreten wird. Auch motivationale Aspekte, d.h. dass eine Sportlehrkraft darum bemüht ist die eigenen Ressourcen zu schonen, kann eine Begründung für evasives Verhalten sein. Problematisch für die Erfüllung des Arbeitsauftrages der Lehrkraft als auch deren Gesundheit wird es, wenn das auswei-chende Verhalten in ausgeprägter Form vorliegt und handlungsleitende Funktion übernimmt. Um das individuelle evasive Verhaltenspotenzial zu messen, wurde ein Erhebungsinstrument kon-struiert, das sich in seiner Grundstruktur an dem didaktischen Modell von Scherler (2004) orien-tiert und neben der Lehrkraft mit den Schülerinnen und Schülern, den Inhalten und den äußeren Rahmenbedingungen drei weitere Einflussfaktoren auf das Unterrichten berücksichtigt. Im Rahmen einer Fragebogenstudie (N=705) wurden ausgewählte persönliche und berufsbiogra-phische Daten erhoben sowie eine Reihe weiterer Erhebungsinstrumente (AVEM, WIRKLEHR, FKK, BEL, SVF120, OLBI, AMS-kurz, UGTS) eingesetzt und in drei Untersuchungskomplexen in Beziehung zur Ausprägung des evasiven Verhaltenspotenzials gesetzt. Im ersten Untersuchungsschwerpunkt wurden persönliche und berufsbiographische Merkmale durch die Fragestellung „Wer nutzt evasive Strategien im Unterricht?“ einbezogen, während im zweiten Schwerpunkt die unterrichtliche Charakteristik bzw. die Unterschiede in der Realisation des Unterrichts in Abhängigkeit vom evasiven Verhaltenspotenzial dargestellt wird. Letztlich wurde im abschließenden Untersuchungsschwerpunkt das Verhalten und Erleben im Sportunterricht fokussiert und Bezüge zu Aspekten wie berufliche Zufriedenheit, Belastungserleben und Gesund-heit hergestellt. Im Rahmen der Auswertung stellte sich heraus, dass evasives Bewältigungsverhalten eine kontra-produktive Möglichkeit des Umgangs mit Konflikten und Belastungen darstellt. Mit zunehmender evasiver Verhaltenstendenz wird das Erreichen der im Rahmen des Doppelauftrags des Sportun-terrichts formulierten Erziehungs- und Bildungsziele gefährdet. Zudem konnte ein verstärktes Be-lastungsempfinden, sowie deutlich geringere Werte im Bereich der beruflichen Zufriedenheit fest-gestellt werden, was letztendlich als Gefahr für die seelische und körperliche Gesundheit zusam-menzufassen ist.

This thesis analyses driving dynamics of tractors and its dependence on their weight and age. In the beginning, brief history of tractor development and definition of basic concept of the tractor analysis is described. The thesis states procedures for obtaining magnitudes necessary for determining of driving dynamics. Experimental part describes the realized measurement on chosen sample of tractors and interprets measured values. Last part of the thesis contains evaluation of the measurement results.

The main goal of this work is to gain knowledge of how and to what extent state-of-the-artsimulation tools can be used in a conceptual development phase for vehicle dynamics control atVolvo Car Corporation (VCC).The first part of the thesis deals with an evaluation of vehicle dynamics simulation tools and theiruses. The three simulation tools selected for the study, namely Mechanical Simulation CarSim 8.2.1,IPG CarMaker 4.0.5, and VI-Grade CarRealTime V14, are briefly described and discussed. In order toevaluate and compare these tools with respect to application for vehicle dynamics control, a criterialist is developed covering aspects such as tool requirements and intended usage. Based on thecriteria list and certain identified drawbacks, a ranking of the tools is made possible. Furthermore,the process of developing vehicle models for the different tools is discussed in detail, along with theprocedure of validating the vehicle models.In the second part, the concept of Collision Avoidance Driver Assistance (CADA) function isintroduced and possible approaches for developing CADA functions are discussed in brief. It isimportant to note that the CADA functions in this work are based on cornering the vehicle i.e.maneuvering around the threat, rather than solely reducing vehicle speed. A number ofimplementations of the functions are developed in Simulink. A frequency analysis of a simplifiedlinear vehicle model is performed to investigate the influence of steering, differential braking, andtheir combination on the resultant lateral displacement of the vehicle during an evasive maneuver.The developed CADA functions are then simulated using the vehicle simulation tools. Two specificmetrics - Lateral Displacement gain and DeltaX - are formulated to evaluate the effectiveness of theCADA functions. Based on these metrics, the assistance obtained due to the functions for a specificevasive maneuver is compared.From the evaluation process of the three tools, two were considered suitable for the purpose ofsimulating collision avoidance functions. The evaluation of the CADA functions demonstrates thatcombined assistive steering with differential braking provides considerable assistance in order toavoid collisions. The simulation results also present interesting trends which provide a usefuldirection regarding the conditions for intervention by such collision avoidance functions during anevasive maneuver. The use of simulation tools makes it possible to observe these trends and utilizethem in the development process of the functions.

Previous studies have shown that many drivers are unable to provide the right amount of steering torque when facing an imminent collision with an upcoming obstacle. In some cases, drivers under-react i.e., they provide too low steering inputs and thus collide with the obstacle in front; in other cases, drivers might apply a higher steering input than necessary, potentially resulting in the vehicle leaving the road or losing stability. The EMA function is an active safety feature which has the sole objective of providing steering torque interference when performing such a manoeuvre. The motivation for the thesis work is to overcome some limitations of the existing MA function which does not incorporate the ability to differentiate driver reactions. In this thesis, an Evasive Manoeuvre Assist (EMA) function is designed to adapt to both types of the drivers, by an optimised steering torque overlay. The existing current EMA function is always amplifying the driver steering inputs using a feed-forward controller. The focus of this thesis work is to identify and dene a proper steering sequence reference model for closed-loop feedback control design. A simple single-point preview model is designed first to calculate the reference steering angle. A few test scenarios are set-up using the IPG CarMakerTMsimulation tool. The reference model is then tuned with respect to the amplitude and frequency by batch simulations to obtain the optimal steering prole. A feedback controller is then designed using this reference model. The controller is implemented in a real-time environment, using a Volvo rapid-prototype test vehicle. Preliminary variation tests have shown that the developed controller can enhance both an over-reacting and under-reacting driver's performance during an evasive manoeuvre, by applying assistance/resistance EPAS torque timely. The designed EMA function is shown to accommodate different driver reactions and provide intuitive torque interference. As opposed to the earlier notion that the EMA function only assists the driver with an additional steering wheel torque, it was shown that the optimal steering torque overlay might be in the form of assistance or resistance.