The work explores the possibility to increase the automation along a production line by introducing robots without reducing the safety of the operator. The introduction of a robot to a workstation often demands a redesign of the workstation and traditionally the introduction of physical safety solutions that can limit the access to the work area and object on the production line. This work aims to find a general solution that can be used not only in the construction industry, but also in other types of industries to allow for an increased Human and Robot Interaction (HRI) without physical safety solution. A concept solution of a dynamic and flexible robot cell is presented to allow for HRI based on safety zones in a shared work environment. The concepts are based on one robot and the usage of a 3D camera system allowing for the design of virtual safety zones, used to control the HRI. When an operator approaches the robots work area and triggers a safety zone the robot stops its work and moves away from the operator. Based on the safety requirements and triggered zones the robot will continue to work in a new area or wait until the operator leaves the work area and then continue with the interrupted work task. This will allow the operator and the robot to work together, where the operator location controls the robots workspace. Testing and validation of the presented concept showed that the wanted functionality could be obtained. It also showed limitations to the equipment and the system used during tests and raised additional aspects of the safety for HRI. Of the detected limitations the most crucial when looking at up-time for the production line, is the camera system need of a relatively dust free environment, good and constant lighting. For the safety of the system the limitation lies in the size and placing of the safety zones in combination with the disturbance from  surrounding equipment. The presented concept has proven to work, and can be applied not only for the construction industry but for all industries with manufacturing alongside production lines with large components.

Road traffic safety has increasingly become in need of educated road safety professionals, as the number of accidents in the World Health Organization member countries exceeds one million. The profession itself is transitioning from experience based decision making to empirical, theoretical and mathematical based solutions. However, road traffic safety is a multidiscipline, crossing over many fields and requiring a high degree of communication between different institutions. There are very few institutions that provide programs in the field; furthermore, they employ traditional lecture-based teaching methods. The traditional teaching environment does not fulfill the educational needs of future traffic safety professionals due to its rigidity and lack of problem solving exercises. An alternative method, namely problem based learning, is recommended as an alternative teaching method in this paper. The thesis is constructed in such a way as to develop a complete road traffic safety educational module at graduate and post graduate level. The theoretical basis on which a road traffic safety module is later built is presented in the first part of the thesis. Major concepts in road traffic safety, as well as problem based learning methods are investigated. In addition, a literature review SWOT analysis based on literature is conducted.The module development consists of establishing the road traffic safety learning goals for each segment in the module, appropriate assessment criteria and group work format. The module contains gradual difficulty level problems, starting from the easiest topic and easiest format (closed ended problem) and ending with the hardest topic and hardest format (open ended problem). The last section employs the SWOT analysis findings in the theoretical section to develop a SWOT analysis of the road traffic safety module presented in the thesis.

ISO 26262 is a functional safety standard under development at the time of this thesis. It is an adaptation of the functional safety standard IEC 61508, aimed at development of automotive electrical/electronic systems. The version of ISO-26262 that was used and discussed in this thesis is the final draft released in January 2011. In this thesis, a subset of ISO-26262 is applied in the development of a safety critical driver assistance system for a Scania vehicle. The parts of ISO-26262 that are treated are Part 3: Concept phase, Part 4: Product development at the system level and Part 5: Product development at the hardware level. Throughout the thesis we evaluate ISO-26262 and report our experience of working with it. The driver assistance system under development, which ISO-26262 is applied to, is Collision Avoidance by Steering, a system that aims to avoid or mitigate rear-end collisions with vehicles in front by automatic steering of the vehicle.

There is an increasing demand for reliable wireless communication in embedded real time systems.  Various communication requirements make the development and deployment of applications that rely on the existence of a protocol stack a challenging research and industrial field of activity. Suitable protocol stacks need to be designed and implemented on new hardware platforms and software structures. Applications that exchange packets over a wireless medium have to deal with time constraints, error checks and have to be aware of energy consumption.   PIE (Platform for Intelligent Embedded Systems) is an experimental platform developed at Halmstad University for educational purposes.  It is a robotic vehicle with wireless communication capabilities that can be used to experiment with traffic scenarios where the vehicles communicate in order to cooperate, for example to avoid hazards or to build platoons.   This thesis addresses the design and implementation of a protocol stack suitable for the PIE platform in the area of vehicle alert systems. Requirements include low latencies along with low packet loss ratios.  The thesis addresses also experimenting with reactive objects for programming network software.

The hotel industry prides itself in its welcoming attitude towards its guests by offering hospitality, comfort and privacy. At the same guest safety and security has been argued to be of primary concern in the industry. The aim of this thesis is a) to study how hoteliers develop and implement risk management plans and procedures to ensure safe hotel operations, and b) to study how it is possible to gap the bridge between providing hospitable services, which at the same time are safe and secure. A qualitative, cross-case study has been applied. The study builds on theories composed primarily of established step-by-step risk management processes. In-depth interviews were carried out with four managers at different hotels across Sweden. The study found that the hotel industry in Sweden lacks a common risk management framework for which to implement consistently and coherently. A common framework would enable hotels to embrace risk management and be able to utilize it in their operation. Furthermore, it was found that risk management ought to be integrated in all organizational activities and processes. It should not be an isolated event, but rather implemented on an on-going basis. It is imperative for hoteliers to realize that hospitality is not only related to offering qualitative services, but also that ensuring guests of their safety/security is a major part of the overall service. In addition, providing hospitable services that are safe at the same time necessitates that risk management is implemented consistently by regularly aiming to raise current standard. Hence, continuous improvement ought to be of fundamental importance in any organization that is fully committed to risk management. This thesis, therefore, suggests a model that interlinks risk- and quality management.

Road conditions are a critical issue for road users as, if not given sufficient attention, they may threaten users’ lives. The environmental parameters, such as snowy, icy, dry and wet, are important in relation to the condition of roads. This is particularly true in relation to the northern regions and greatest concern should be in relation to snowy and icy situations. In this thesis, a system based on an InGaAs area scan sensor utilizes NIR technology to detect water or ice on the road so as to enable drivers to avoid slippery road conditions. The conditions caused by freezing water on road surface are particularly dangerous and are not easy to observe and it is hope that this project will boost traffic safety. The system is able to assist road maintenance personnel in forecasting and detecting slippery road conditions during winter road maintenance (WRM). The system, which is based on FPGA, has functionalities that display the captured images on an HDMI monitor and send the images to the software on a host PC via the UART protocol. An interface board, which carries the sensor and which connects to the FPGA board, is developed for NIR sensor. VHDL implementation and PC software design are the works included in the project. Besides, this device is exploited utilizing InGaAs image sensor. According to its features, it can be applied in other applications which will also be discussed. Finally, experiments are conducted in order to investigate the system’s operation with the variation of temperature.

Adverse weather conditions can increase travel risk. Understanding how drivers react to adverse weather, such as rainfall, can aid in the understanding of road safety patterns and traffic operations. This information can in turn be used to improve driver education as well as highway operation through improved signing or the introduction of intelligent highway systems. Hourly rainfall data collected from the Pearson International Airport weather station and City of Toronto traffic data collected at the study site on the Gardiner expressway were used to create event and control pairs. In total, 115 hours with rainfall were matched to control data one week before or after the rainfall event. The traffic sensor at the study site collected speed, volume, and occupancy data at 20-second intervals, which was aggregated to five minutes. In addition, speed deviation and headway data at the 5-minute interval were used for analysis purposes. Two methods were used to test the effects of rainfall on traffic variables and the relationships between them. Matched pair t-tests were used to determine the magnitude of change between event and control conditions for the volume, speed, speed deviation, and headway variables for congested and uncongested traffic conditions. In addition, stepwise multiple linear regression was used to test the effects of rainfall on speed-volume and volume-occupancy relationships. Results of the matched pair t-tests indicated that volumes, speeds, and speed deviations dropped in event conditions, while headways increased slightly. Changes tended to be greater for congested than uncongested conditions. Linear regression results indicated that changes in speed were sensitive to volume conditions, and changes in volume were sensitive to occupancy, although only to a limited extent. Overall, drivers respond to rainfall conditions by reducing both speed and speed deviations, and increasing headway. Reductions in speed are larger in congested conditions, while increases in headway are smaller. Taken in combination, drivers are taking positive steps in order to either maintain or improve safety levels.

To provide an adequate level of safety at grade crossings, Transport Canada has allocated several millions annually to prevent collisions at grade crossings through the implementation of countermeasures, such as train-actuated warning devices and track devices. Railway companies and provincial agencies have also provided additional support to improve safety at highway-railway grade crossings. One of technical challenges in estimating safety effect of countermeasures at highway-railway grade crossing is an extremely rare occurrence of collisions. Given that the collision process is random with significant variation over time and space, it is hard to judge whether a specific crossing is safe or safer than other crossings solely based on the number of collisions in a given year. Decision makers are also required to make difficult decisions on safety investment accounting for uncertainty in effectiveness of countermeasures. The level of uncertainty is even higher when there is lack of observed collision data before and after the implementation of specific countermeasures. This study proposes a Bayesian data fusion method which overcomes these limitations. In this method, we used previous research findings on the effect of a given countermeasure, which could vary by jurisdictions and operating conditions, to obtain a priori inference on its expected effects. We then used locally calibrated models, which are valid for a specific jurisdiction, to provide better estimates of the countermeasure effects. Within a Bayesian framework, these two sources were integrated to obtain the posterior distribution of the countermeasure effect. The outputs provided not only the expected collision response to a specific countermeasure, but also its variance and corresponding probability distribution for a range of likely values. Some numerical examples using Canadian highway-railway grade crossing data illustrate how the proposed method can be used to predict the effects of prior knowledge and data likelihood on the estimates of countermeasure effects.

During a signal malfunction, traffic signals are operated in the flash mode. During this event, drivers are presented with one of two possible scenarios: (1) flashing yellow on the major street and flashing red on the minor street or (2) flashing red on all approaches. Yellow/red flash is typically the default mode utilized based on the expectation that red/red flash would produce an intolerable amount of delay. However, little research has been conducted to date on flashing operations, with exception of low-volume nighttime conditions. A traffic signal malfunction can occur during any time of the day, potentially placing the signal into flash mode under moderate to peak traffic volume conditions. In order to assess the safety implications of these events and improve the process by which the mode of flash (yellow/red versus red/red) is selected, the research contained in this study evaluated driver behavior and the operational characteristics of intersections operating in malfunction flash mode under a wide spectrum of traffic demands. Analysis of field data collected at thirteen study intersections in the Atlanta, Georgia area found that confusion exists among drivers approaching a signal in flash mode. The analysis found that a significant percentage of vehicles stop on a yellow indication. It was seen that an intersection flashing yellow/red could operate as a two-way stop or four-way stop, potentially transitioning between these two alternatives on a minute-by-minute basis. This creates an increased potential for crashes and further compounds the problem of driver expectancy by creating a constantly changing control environment. The stopping on yellow also introduces additional delay, which reduces the operational benefit of utilizing the yellow/red flash mode. Furthermore, a high level of traffic violations was observed for the flashing red indications for both yellow/red and red/red flashing operation. Based upon the study results, providing one consistent mode of flashing operation may be a reasonable solution to improving driver expectancy and safety. Red/red flashing operation is the preferred mode as it reduces vehicle speeds and the variability in the number of vehicles stopping, while improving driver expectancy.

Essential to human life is water. Drinking water, in particular, is of utmost significance for all living creatures including man. An examination of the transmission process of drinking water reveals the high importance of pipe lines. The water pipe lines delivering water today encounter serious problems. Corrosion has caused deterioration in pipe lines, which contributes rust to drinking, a serious water quality problem. In addition, pipe line failures have caused social issues, such as suspension of water supply. This study developed a model to estimate the life expectancy and residual life of a pipe based on the assessment of failure risk in order to evaluate the current failure possibility and predict when the pipe will reach the point of failure. The developed model for estimation of residual life by failure risk was used to assess the failure risk of water pipes based on the general data and pipe sources of the Chang Won City water pipes. The efforts to diagnose and evaluate water pipes are limited to the assessment of current pipe conditions, which is why they can easily determine the priority of rehabilitation based on the current pipe conditions but have hard time getting information about how the pipes have deteriorated to the point of requiring rehabilitation. The objectives of this study are: (1) develop a model for estimating corrosion rates and residual thickness of water pipes, (2) assess loads and stress affecting water pipes, (3) to estimate damage risk, and (4) calculate safety factors. Results of the study could help reduce rehabilitation costs and secure water quality after renovation. Thus it would contribute to the safe and stable operation and management of pipe networks by increasing the life of water pipes.