Aimsun takes part in driver data study to improve C/AVs

Aimsun is taking part in a UK study which is using human driver data to help improve the performance and acceptability of connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs). The one-year project, Learning through Ambient Driving Styles for Autonomous Vehicles (LAMBDA-V), will also look at how driver behaviour can be analysed and used to accelerate the adoption of C/AVs. Aimsun says new rules for safer and more efficient driving behaviour could be created from existing vehicles, based on road laws and on how h
November 14, 2018 Read time: 3 mins

16 Aimsun is taking part in a UK study which is using human driver data to help improve the performance and acceptability of connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs).

The one-year project, Learning through Ambient Driving Styles for Autonomous Vehicles (LAMBDA-V), will also look at how driver behaviour can be analysed and used to accelerate the adoption of C/AVs.

Aimsun says new rules for safer and more efficient driving behaviour could be created from existing vehicles, based on road laws and on how humans drive in specific circumstances. Additionally, these could be ‘tuned’ by modelling how C/AVs and other vehicles behave in a mixed fleet.

LAMBDA-V is part of the UK government’s £22 million funding from the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) for projects to develop AVs.

CloudMade is providing machine learning and human driver behaviour modelling, while telematics and data specialist 497 Trakm8 will collate and analyse anonymised sample data from thousands of vehicles. Birmingham City Council will handle the legal duties associated with the project.

The initiative will assess a range of scenerios such as the likelihood of a human driver swerving to avoid a pothole and will look at how and when drivers apply brakes when entering a 30mph zone in a bid to better inform C/AV decision making.

James Brown, chief technology officer at CloudMade, believes being able to understand and model human behaviour is a critical element of humanising AVs and enabling personalisation of the vehicle.

“The CCAV grant will enable us to accelerate the development of solutions that learn individual driver behaviour and derive the necessary rule-sets and approaches to modelling and adaptation during the drive,” Brown adds.

LAMBDA-V will seek to understand the parameters needed for modelling human drivers and how to extend them to make vehicles rules, improving current technology and modelling impact to balance comfort, capacity and safety.

Also, the scheme will integrate vehicle maker and road operator perspectives in C/AV behaviour and examine how to develop privacy-law-compliant datasets for similar projects.

Aimsun believes benefits would include reduced unforeseen impacts on traffic, patents on rules for C/AVs, an improved understanding of early mixed fleet operation of human and automated vehicles and how to make early level self-driving vehicles attractive to users. Highway authorities and vehicle makers could also obtain an improved understanding of how to deploy C/AVs in a range of real-world roads.

Urban Traffic Control Location Based Systems

Related Content

  • New TomTom app gives driver feedback on driving style
    June 26, 2015
    TomTom Telematics has launched a new smartphone app in the UK and Germany that gives drivers real-time feedback on their driving style. TomTom CURFER uses the latest developments in connected car technology from TomTom Telematics to provide drivers with visual information on how they drive – including live and retrospective feedback on their braking, cornering, acceleration and idling. The app works in conjunction with the TomTom LINK 100 dongle, which plugs into the vehicle’s OBD port to connect car
    Read More
  • Aimsun enters partnership to develop tool for managing mixed-autonomy traffic
    January 15, 2019
    Aimsun has partnered with UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies to develop Flow, a tool for managing large-scale traffic systems where human-driven and autonomous vehicles (AVs) operate together. Flow offers a suite of pre-built traffic scenarios and is now integrated with Aimsun Next mobility modelling software. The open source architecture knits together microsimulation tools with deep reinforcement learning libraries in the cloud. Launched last September, Flow allows users to build and
    Read More
  • PTV sets its sights on Smart City solutions
    February 9, 2017
    Making a city smarter not only relies on understand technological opportunities but also human decision-making, as Miller Crockart explains. Cities are about people – a fact that can easily be forgotten when experts talk about roads, healthcare and education as though they are abstract and unconnected monoliths rather than things people use. Understanding how and why people use services is vital for making decisions on how they can be optimised for maximum efficiency across inter-connected networks that for
    Read More
  • Driven demos AVs operating ‘safely’ in London
    October 7, 2019
    The Driven Consortium has completed a week-long demonstration which it says shows that autonomous vehicles (AVs) can operate safely in London - with a safety driver. Driven - a £13.6 million initiative supported by the UK government - carried out the demo around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford in the east of the city. Driven has focused on completing fully-autonomous routes within the UK capital and the city of Oxford using Oxbotica’s autonomous software. Consortium members Moninet and Axa XL p
    Read More

Highlighted Content