Man has come a long way from the invention of wheel thousands of years ago. The car today has become an indispensable source of travel for covering short and long distances. However, man now aims to reach the next summit in terms of personal travel. Autonomous or self driving cars are slowly turning out to be the future path in terms of automotive technologies. With the current advancements in this field from manufacturing companies like Volvo, BMW, Mercedes etc. and even Google, the autonomous cars looks all set to debut within the next five years.
This is supposed to make travel safer and at the same time would allow the people to carry on with their work without having to worry about the traffic and the stress associated with driving. Several technologies like Adaptive Cruise Control, Lane Keeping Assist, Blind Spot Detection, Automatic Emergency Braking etc. and many others have been developed and implemented in the cars running on the roads today. These technologies are the transition between manual to autonomous driving. In other words, these are like the first steps towards fully autonomous cars.
The one of the main USP for autonomous cars are that it will make driving safer as the reaction time of the car with its algorithms and sensors is faster than a human being. Autonomous cars are not just supposed to protect the people inside the car but also the people outside which include other car drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.
This project aims at improving the safety for the cyclists by identifying the behavior of the cyclists, the critical scenarios and decision making algorithms which will make the car brake in the event that an imminent crash is sensed by the system. We have used sensor fusion methods which include using a LIDAR for continuous monitoring of the cyclist once within the view of the car and the autonomous braking depending on the inputs received by the model.
Autonomous cars can become a reality only if people have confidence that it will keep all the road users safe. This project is an effort in that direction which would ultimately help in the acceptance of the autonomous cars. We hope to simulate critical scenarios and show that the car would brake every time there is a chance to collide with the cyclist. Our approach to solve and deliver on this project is what will be explored in the next topics.
