Mar 10, 2014 - AGV-ITS on the hot topic of âPlanning,. Perception, and ... workshops, the 2007 Workshop on Plan- ... was in St. Louis, Missouri, during IROS.
from the guest editors
Special Issue on Perception and Navigation for Autonomous Vehicles By P. Martinet, C. Laugier, and U. Nunes
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his special issue of IEEE goal of zero fatalities. Clearly, robotics Robotics and Automation (ICRA) and Robotics and Automation technologies are at the very core of this had around 60 attendees. The second, Magazine (RAM) has been major shift in the automobile paradigm PPNIV’08, was in Nice, France, during prepared in the scope of the (Figure 1). the IEEE/RSJ 2008 International Conferactivities of the Technical Committee on Most of the 15 articles that have been ence on Intelligent Robots and Systems Autonomous Ground Vehicle and submitted for this RAM special issue are (IROS’08) and had more than 90 regisIntelligent Transportation Systems from speakers or active participants of tered attendees. The third, PPNIV’09, (AGV-ITS) (http://www.ieee-ras.org/ the series of workshops organized by was in St. Louis, Missouri, during IROS aut on om ou s - g rou n d ‘09 and had around 70 vehicles-and-intelligentattendees. The fourth editransportation-systems) of tion, PPNIV’12, was in Navigable Space and Collision Risk the IEEE Robotics and Vilamoura, Portugal, during Automation Society (RAS). IROS’12 and had more than The purpose of this spe95 attendees. The fifth edicial issue is to address topics tion, PPNIV’13, was in related to the challenging Tokyo during IROS’13 problems of autonomous (more than 135 attendees) navigation and driving where two best papers were assistance in open and awarded. In parallel, several dynamic environments. workshops closer to some Technologies related to other robotics issues have application fields, such as been organized such as unmanned outdoor vehiSNODE’07 in San Diego, cles or intelligent road vehiCalifornia, during IROS’07 cles, are considered from (around 80 attendees), both the theoretical and SNODE’09 in Kobe during technological points of Figure 1. The problems of autonomous navigation and collision risk. ICRA’09 (around 70 attendview. Several research quesees), and RITS’10 in tions located on the cutting edge of the the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Anchorage, Alaska, during ICRA’10 state of the art are addressed. Among the AGV-ITS on the hot topic of “Planning, (around 35 attendees), and PNAVHE’11 many application areas that robotics Perception, and Navigation for Intelli- in San Francisco during IROS’11 addresses, individual mobility and mass gent Vehicles.” Among these submitted (around 50 attendees). transportation seem to be the domains articles, only five have been accepted for The subject of this special issue has that will most dramatically benefit from publication in this special issue after a been motivated by both the unpreceintelligent automation. Autonomous two-round review process. dented technical advances obtained in driving is emerging as the solution for The first edition of this series of the field of intelligent vehicles over the dramatically improving efficiency while, workshops, the 2007 Workshop on Plan- last decade and the currently favorable at the same time, leading to the ultimate ning, Perception, and Navigation for socioeconomic context. After the sucIntelligent Vehicles (PPNIV’07), was cess of the DARPA Urban Challenge in held in Rome, Italy, during the 2007 2007, the Google Car Project has shown Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2014.2301112 Date of publication: 10 March 2014 IEEE International Conference on the potential feasibility of the driverless
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car concept in real traffic ronment Monitoring” reports conditions; it has also pushed the recent advances in the some state governmental Bayesian occupancy filter parauthorities in the United adigm, which provides a States to modify the legislaframework for robust gridtion to make it possible to based monitoring of dynamic experiment with such vehienvironments. This approach cles on normal roads. Several allows the perception system other challenges in the world, to estimate dynamic grids such as the Grand Cooperacontaining probabilistic infortive Driving Challenge mation of both occupancy (GCDC) in 2011 and the Visand velocity. The article shows Lab Intercontinental Autonothat many false detections can mous Challenge (VIAC) in be avoided by first classifying 2010, have also contributed the grid cells as probabilistito the dissemination of the cally static or probabilistically autonomous driving concept Figure 2. A method of obstacle detection to avoid collision. dynamic. The clustering step and its experimental validathen provides, in a more tion in realistic traffic condirobust way, the detected movtions. For instance, the four ing objects of the observed driverless vehicles of the scene (Figure 2). Obstacle: 6.7 m / 0.94 s VIAC covered almost 16,000 The third article, “Detectkm from Parma, Italy, to ing Unfocused Raindrops,” Shanghai, China, on various shows one example of solvroads by moving autonoing important issues when Left Image mously in a platoon during a visual perception is impaired three-month race (http://viac. during rainy conditions. vislab.it/). Obviously, this article may Because of the recent techextend the working condinical advances and mediatized tions of conventional events, the automotive indus- Figure 3. A method of lane detection and risk avoidance. advanced driver assistance try is more and more interestsystems (Figure 3). ed in these new technologies, The fourth article, “GNSS and several commercial announcements ics in the field of multivehicle control, Autonomous Localization,” focuses on have recently been made (e.g., by Nissan, dynamic environment perception, GNSS autonomous localization. It is Toyota, and Tesla). Also, several govern- vision under bad weather conditions, well known that such systems do not ments in the world (including Japan, global navigation satellite systems work well when used in inner cities. Korea, the United States, and France) are (GNSS)-based localization, and motion The main problem is to be able to ananow pushing for the industrial develop- planning, respectively. lyze online the reliability of the system ment of such technologies. The first article, “Adaptable Robot by using the knowledge of threeHowever, social acceptance and leg- Formation Control,” deals with the dimensional maps when receiving the islation still remain as barriers to the modeling and control of a fleet of satellite signals. deployment of such a new technolo- mobile robots operating in formation The final article, “Model-Predictive gy, even if several thousands of kilome- using adaptive and predictive control to Motion Planning,” proposes recent ters in autonomous driving mode have account for the influence of several advances in motion planning using been already been demonstrated all phenomena, including dynamic per- model-predictive motion planning over the world. turbations and bad grip conditions. techniques. This special issue includes five artiThe second article, “A Robust Motion cles addressing five complementary top- Detec tion Technique for Dynamic Envi-
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