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Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are pushing an increasing interest and development when dealing with eco-driving systems. In this framework, this paper presents a method to define speed profiles specifically designed for Green Light Optimal Speed Advisory (GLOSA) systems on buses. GLOSA aims to optimize traffic flow by providing vehicles with real-time speed recommendations synchronized with traffic signal timings. Leveraging statistical analysis of experimental data collected from an urban bus, the study develops a methodology to extract meaningful insights into bus behaviour and traffic dynamics. The proposed approach considers road topology, scheduled bus stops, and signal timings to define simple although suitable speed profiles considering the peculiarities of the motion of a bus in an urban scenario. Through extensive data collection robust statistical data are defined, allowing the definition of vehicle motion profile for effectively develop and implement GLOSA systems. This research contributes to the advancement of Intelligent Transportation Systems by providing realistic data and practical insights for optimizing bus operations in urban environments.

We introduce the third major version of Metatheory.jl, a Julia library for general-purpose metaprogramming and symbolic computation. Metatheory.jl provides a flexible and performant implementation of e-graphs and Equality Saturation (EqSat) that addresses the two-language problem in high-level compiler optimizations, symbolics and metaprogramming. We present results from our ongoing optimization efforts, comparing the state-of-the-art egg Rust library's performance against our system and show that performant EqSat implementations are possible without sacrificing the comfort of a direct 1-1 integration with a dynamic, high-level and an interactive host programming language., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, submission for 2024 PLDI e-graph workshop

Teleoperation provides human operator sophisticated perceptual and cognitive skills into an over the network control loop. It gives hope of addressing some challenges related to vehicular autonomy which is based on artificial intelligence by providing a backup plan. Variable network time delays in data transmission is the major problem in teleoperating a vehicle. On 4G network, variability of these delays is high. Due to this, both video streaming and driving commands encounter variable time delay. This paper presents an approach of providing the human operator a forecast video stream which replicates future perspective of vehicle field of view accounting the delay present in the network. Regarding the image transformation, perspective projection technique is combined with correction given by smith predictor in the control loop. This image transformation accounts current time delay and tries to address both issues, time delays as well as its variability. For experiment sake, only frontward field of view is forecast. Performance is evaluated by performing online vehicle teleoperation on street edge case maneuvers and later comparing the path deviation with and without perspective projection.

Vehicle teleoperation is an interesting feature in many fields. A typical problem of teleoperation is communication time delay which, together with actuator saturation and environmental disturbance, can cause a vehicle deviation from the target trajectory imposed by the human operator who imposes to the vehicle a steering wheel angle reference and a speed/acceleration reference. With predictive techniques, time-delay can be accounted at sufficient extent. But, in presence of disturbances, due to the absence of instantaneous haptic and visual feedback, human-operator steering command transmitted to the the vehicle is unaccounted with disturbances observed by the vehicle. To improve reference tracking without losing promptness in driving control, reference trajectory in the form of successive reference poses can be transmitted instead of steering commands to the vehicle. We introduce this new concept, namely, the 'successive reference-pose tracking (SRPT)' to improve path tracking in vehicle teleoperation. This paper discusses feasibility and advantages of this new method, compare to the smith predictor control approach. Simulations are performed in SIMULINK environment, where a 14-dof vehicle model is being controlled with Smith and SRPT controllers in presence of variable network delay. Scenarios for performance comparison are low adhesion ground, strong lateral wind and steer-rate demanding maneuvers. Simulation result shows significant improvement in reference tracking with SRPT approach., Comment: VPPC2022 conference submitted

In literature, Extended Object Tracking (EOT) algorithms developed for autonomous driving predominantly provide obstacles state estimation in cartesian coordinates in the Vehicle Reference Frame. However, in many scenarios, state representation in road-aligned curvilinear coordinates is preferred when implementing autonomous driving subsystems like cruise control, lane-keeping assist, platooning, etc. This paper proposes a Gaussian Mixture Probability Hypothesis Density~(GM-PHD) filter with an Unscented Kalman Filter~(UKF) estimator that provides obstacle state estimates in curvilinear road coordinates. We employ a hybrid sensor fusion architecture between Lidar and Radar sensors to obtain rich measurement point representations for EOT. The measurement model for the UKF estimator is developed with the integration of coordinate conversion from curvilinear road coordinates to cartesian coordinates by using cubic hermit spline road model. The proposed algorithm is validated through Matlab Driving Scenario Designer simulation and experimental data collected at Monza Eni Circuit.

Most computer algebra systems (CAS) support symbolic integration as core functionality. The majority of the integration packages use a combination of heuristic algebraic and rule-based (integration table) methods. In this paper, we present a hybrid (symbolic-numeric) methodology to calculate the indefinite integrals of univariate expressions. The primary motivation for this work is to add symbolic integration functionality to a modern CAS (the symbolic manipulation packages of SciML, the Scientific Machine Learning ecosystem of the Julia programming language), which is mainly designed toward numerical and machine learning applications and has a different set of features than traditional CAS. The symbolic part of our method is based on the combination of candidate terms generation (borrowed from the Homotopy operators theory) with rule-based expression transformations provided by the underlying CAS. The numeric part is based on sparse-regression, a component of Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics (SINDy) technique. We show that this system can solve a large variety of common integration problems using only a few dozen basic integration rules., Comment: 8 pages. submitted to ISSAC 2022. Code at https://github.com/SciML/SymbolicNumericIntegration.jl

It is estimated that 90% of crashes occur due to human error, mainly induced by poor judgement, distraction or lack of situation awareness. The development of systems that aim to increase road safety and to improve driving comfort is the key challenge that many OEMs are currently tackling. The use of fast and reliable of innovative communication technologies such as 5G can enhance advancements and developments in the field of ADAS. The aim of the paper is the study of the potential improvements connectivity can bring to ACC systems in terms of safety and vehicle comfort. Starting from state-of-art ACC present in literature, a novel connected ACC is designed and deeply reported. The main features of the algorithms consist in integrating information about other road vehicles fed by 5G and about potential grip given by smart sensors such as Pirelli Cyber Tyre. The novel solution is then compared to the standard ACC by means of several simulations considering two real traffic situations with different road friction coefficients. Finally benefits and limitations of the proposed algorithm are deeply discussed.

This thesis proposes an advanced, generic and high-level code rewriting and analysis system in the Julia programming language, providing applied equality saturation in the presence of multiple dispatch and metaprogramming. We show how our system can practically solve some challenging problems: Can programmers implement their own high-level compiler optimizations for their domain-specific scientific programs, without the requirement of them being compiler experts at all? Can these optimizers be implemented by users in the same language and inside the same programs they want to optimize, solving the two-language problem? Can these compiler optimizers be written in a high-level fashion, as equations, without the need to worry about the rewriting ordering? Thus, can symbolic mathematics do high-level compiler optimizations or vice-versa?, Comment: Bachelor Thesis in Computer Science, University of Pisa

One of the main components of an autonomous vehicle is the obstacle detection pipeline. Most prototypes, both from research and industry, rely on lidars for this task. Pointcloud information from lidar is usually combined with data from cameras and radars, but the backbone of the architecture is mainly based on 3D bounding boxes computed from lidar data. To retrieve an accurate representation, sensors with many planes, e.g., greater than 32 planes, are usually employed. The returned pointcloud is indeed dense and well defined, but high-resolution sensors are still expensive and often require powerful GPUs to be processed. Lidars with fewer planes are cheaper, but the returned data are not dense enough to be processed with state of the art deep learning approaches to retrieve 3D bounding boxes. In this paper, we propose two solutions based on occupancy grid and geometric refinement to retrieve a list of 3D bounding boxes employing lidar with a low number of planes (i.e., 16 and 8 planes). Our solutions have been validated on a custom acquired dataset with accurate ground truth to prove its feasibility and accuracy.

Self-driving technology is expected to revolutionize different sectors and is seen as the natural evolution of road vehicles. In the last years, real-world validation of designed and virtually tested solutions is growing in importance since simulated environments will never fully replicate all the aspects that can affect results in the real world. To this end, this paper presents our prototype platform for experimental research on connected and autonomous driving projects. In detail, the paper presents the overall architecture of the vehicle focusing both on mechanical aspects related to remote actuation and sensors set-up and software aspects by means of a comprehensive description of the main algorithms required for autonomous driving as ego-localization, environment perception, motion planning, and actuation. Finally, experimental tests conducted in an urban-like environment are reported to validate and assess the performances of the overall system.

This paper presents a trajectory planner for autonomous driving based on a Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) algorithm that accounts for Pacejka's nonlinear lateral tyre dynamics as well as for zero speed conditions through a novel slip angles calculation. In the NMPC framework, road boundaries and obstacles (both static and moving) are taken into account thanks to soft and hard constraints implementation. The numerical solution of the NMPC problem is carried out using ACADO toolkit coupled with the quadratic programming solver qpOASES. The effectiveness of the proposed NMPC trajectory planner has been tested using CarMaker multibody models. Time analysis results provided by the simulations shown, state that the proposed algorithm can be implemented on the real-time control framework of an autonomous vehicle under the assumption of data coming from an upstream estimation block., Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures

As mathematical computing becomes more democratized in high-level languages, high-performance symbolic-numeric systems are necessary for domain scientists and engineers to get the best performance out of their machine without deep knowledge of code optimization. Naturally, users need different term types either to have different algebraic properties for them, or to use efficient data structures. To this end, we developed Symbolics.jl, an extendable symbolic system which uses dynamic multiple dispatch to change behavior depending on the domain needs. In this work we detail an underlying abstract term interface which allows for speed without sacrificing generality. We show that by formalizing a generic API on actions independent of implementation, we can retroactively add optimized data structures to our system without changing the pre-existing term rewriters. We showcase how this can be used to optimize term construction and give a 113x acceleration on general symbolic transformations. Further, we show that such a generic API allows for complementary term-rewriting implementations. We demonstrate the ability to swap between classical term-rewriting simplifiers and e-graph-based term-rewriting simplifiers. We showcase an e-graph ruleset which minimizes the number of CPU cycles during expression evaluation, and demonstrate how it simplifies a real-world reaction-network simulation to halve the runtime. Additionally, we show a reaction-diffusion partial differential equation solver which is able to be automatically converted into symbolic expressions via multiple dispatch tracing, which is subsequently accelerated and parallelized to give a 157x simulation speedup. Together, this presents Symbolics.jl as a next-generation symbolic-numeric computing environment geared towards modeling and simulation.

We introduce Metatheory.jl: a lightweight and performant general purpose symbolics and metaprogramming framework meant to simplify the act of writing complex Julia metaprograms and to significantly enhance Julia with a native term rewriting system, based on state-of-the-art equality saturation techniques, and a dynamic first class Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) pattern matching system that is dynamically composable in an algebraic fashion, taking full advantage of the language's powerful reflection capabilities. Our contribution allows to perform general purpose symbolic mathematics, manipulation, optimization, synthesis or analysis of syntactically valid Julia expressions with a clean and concise programming interface, both during compilation or execution of programs., Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure

In Europe, 20% of road crashes occur at intersections. In recent years, evolving communication technologies are making V2V and V2I faster and more reliable; with such advancements, these crashes, as well as their economic cost, can be partially reduced. In this work, we concentrate on straight path intersection collisions. Connectivity-based algorithms relying on 5G technology and smart sensors are presented and compared to a commercial radar AEB logic in order to evaluate performances and effectiveness in collision avoidance or mitigation. The aforementioned novel safety systems are tested in a blind intersection and low adherence scenario. The first algorithm proposed is obtained by incorporating connectivity information to the original control scheme, while the second algorithm proposed is a novel control logic fully capable of utilizing also adherence estimation provided by smart sensors. Test results show an improvement in terms of safety for both the architecture and high prospects for future developments.