Embedded Systems for Intelligent Vehicles

There is a growing need for some kind of personal driving assistant which is likely to become more acute as the free, independent , and very mobile baby boomers continue to age. Up to 86.5% of the US workforce commutes to work every day through personally owned automobile, often driving alone a car, a van, or a truck, at times in a commute as long as two hours. Urban planning and life style are among the factors, not likely to change in the near future, that make one choose private automobiles over public transportation. Recent developments in Europe have triggered significant increase in car-ownership rates in most of the 27 states of the current enlarged Union from 1995 to 2001—a trend that continues. In short, the man hours spent behind the steering-wheel are continually increasing worldwide, accounting for a lost productivity and increased safety hazards. At the same time, the activities that a driver could do from an isolated automobile have increased, for example, cell phones, televisions, listening to books, mobile computing, among others. If personal assistants can help alleviate some of the driving tasks, it could partially relieve the driver from the required intense attention to the road conditions. It can also help the steadily aging members of the population for whom a personal automobile is the only means of transportation. Intelligent personal driving assistants will improve safety, productivity, and the quality of commute. Intense research in intelligent transportation systems, over the past 20 years, has produced a wealth of insights into the design challenges and applications of intelligent vehicles. A broad spectrum of published literature in this focus cover smart control, communications, and sensor systems residing on-board a vehicle rather than being centralized in traffic management headquarters or being included in road infrastructures. While infrastructural solutions have remained almost exclusively within the reach of governmental investors, the end-user benefits offered by intelligent vehicles technology are poised to attract private capitals from the vehicle manufacturing industry and eventually hit the consumer market. There is a rich set of opportunities for acquisition, trading, and management of location and time tagged information to support the next generation of intelligent vehicles. Intelligent vehicles advocate for autonomous capabilities, self-regulatory, and self-repairing systems to improve safety, driver comfort, and efficient use of infrastruc-tures. Geographical-position-systems-(GPS-) based navigation , computer vision, radar and laser range sensors, adaptive control, and networking, among the others target problems like …