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.

UTC Location Based Systems

Related Content

  • May 19, 2017
    Trakm8 named in London Stock Exchange Group’s ‘1000 Companies to Inspire Britain’ report
    UK telematics and big data specialist Trakm8 has been named one of 1000 Companies to Inspire Britain by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). The report identifies the UK’s fastest-growing and most dynamic small and medium sized businesses (SMEs). To be included in the list, companies needed to show consistent revenue growth over a minimum of three years, significantly outperforming their industry peers. Trakm8 has been listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange since 2005. The company develops
    Read More
  • July 27, 2012
    Give offending drivers credit for good behaviour
    Andrew Rooke and Dave Marples of Technolution B.V. take a look at what can be done to address a long-standing problem: the all-or-nothing approach of automated enforcement. To start, a brief history of speeding: on 14 November 1896, the first Veteran Car Run was staged in England from London to Brighton. It was organised to celebrate new British legislation to raise the maximum speed of vehicles from four to 14mph while also removing the need for a person waving a red flag to walk in front of the car and wa
    Read More
  • February 7, 2019
    No need for safety drivers in AVs, says UK government
    The UK government has signalled that it is ready to allow autonomous vehicles (AVs) with no driver to be tested on public roads. It is already committed to having fully self-driving vehicles on UK roads by 2021. At present, operators are legally required to test AVs only when “a driver is present, in or out of the vehicle, who is ready, able, and willing to resume control of the vehicle”. But the Department for Transport (DfT)’s updated code of practice on trialling AVs on public roads - as opposed t
    Read More
  • October 17, 2019
    Getting C/AVs from pipedream to reality
    The UK government has suggested that driverless cars could be on the roads by 2021. But designers and engineers are grappling with a number of difficult issues, muses Chris Hayhurst of MathWorks Earlier this year, the UK government made the bold statement that by 2021, driverless cars will be on the UK’s roads. But is this an achievable reality? Driverless technology already has its use cases on our roads, with levels of autonomy ranked on a scale. At one end of the spectrum, level 1 is defined by th
    Read More

Highlighted Content