Abstract
The tutorial will focus on recent advances in sensors and on-board instrumentation for new vehicle generations with driver-assistance capability. The economic and social impact of this application field is huge: every year 90 millions of vehicles are sold worldwide, but 1.25 millions of people are killed due to lack of safety. In US 3.1 billions of gallons of fuel are wasted due to traffic congestion. Assisted driving, and in the next future autonomous driving, will increase safety, and will enable intelligent management of traffic flows. Key enabling technologies for this scenario are the on-board sensing systems and relevant HW-SW acquisition/processing instrumentation for collision avoidance, cruise and brake control, parking assistance, enhanced driver vision, tyre condition monitoring, to name just a few.
The tutorial will be divided in 4 Parts. In Part 1 “Introduction”, innovation and market trends in the field of ICT applied to vehicles and intelligent transport systems will be discussed, particularly focusing on next generation of driver-assisted/autonomous vehicles. In Part 2 “Advanced Sensors for Detection and Ranging” real-time sensor acquisition and processing of data from Radar and Lidar will be discussed. A comparison of the two technologies will be also carried out. These sensors aim at detecting if there are obstacles around the vehicle, and at measuring their distance, relative speeds, and directions. Practical examples of multi-channel vehicular Radar systems developed by the instructor will be discussed. Instead, Part 3 “Vision Sensors for Smart Vehicles and ITS” will focus on vision sensors, organized as array of video cameras operating in visible or near infrared spectrum. The problem of reducing the distortions caused by the adoption of large Field of View fish eye lens will be also discussed. Some applications to traffic sign recognition systems, road signs recognition, image mosaicking for all around view during parking assistance, will be discussed. Finally, Part 4 “Sensor Fusion Towards the Autonomous Car” will discuss examples of driver assistance/autonomous navigation by using sensor fusion (i.e. integrating information coming from Radar and Lidar and video camera). An analysis of errors in real-time obstacle tracking will be done. Functional safety issues will be also discussed.
Presenter Bio
Professor Ing. Sergio Saponara, PhD
Università di Pisa, Dip. Ingegneria della Informazione
Prof. Sergio Saponara, IEEE SM, got Master and PhD degrees in Electronic Engineering from University of Pisa. He had positions with the CSMDR-CNR, and with IMEC as Marie Curie research fellow. Currently, he is a Professor at University of Pisa where he teaches several courses (and also at the Italian Naval Academy in Livorno) on electronic systems and instrumentation for vehicular engineering, automation/robotics engineering, maritime and naval science. He is the scientific director of the Summer School of the University of Pisa Enabling technologies for IoT and is co-founder of the post-graduate Master in Automotive Engineering and Principles of Management by Universities of Pisa and Florence. He is a member of the scientific council of UCAR: interUniversity Center of Automotive Research. He held lectures on advanced sensing and processing systems for Summer Schools, PhD programs, for the Pianeta Galileo and TRIO e-learning programs of Tuscany Region, for international companies such as Magna and ABB-Power One, and for invited talks, round tables and tutorials at IEEE and SPIE conferences. His research interests include smart sensors and actuators, also with wireless connectivity, integrated electronics, new instrumentation and measurement systems. Application domains are vehicles and intelligent transports, on-board space electronics, wearable and/or wireless sensing for IoT. He co-authored 300 international scientific papers. His H-index is 22 in Scopus/WoS and 25 in Google Scholar. He is member of 2 IEEE standardization activities, of 3 TCs of the IEEE IMS, of the IEEE special interest group in IoT and of the World Forum on IoT. He served in the organization of more than 100 international conferences, most from IEEE and SPIE. He is member of the reviewing board of more than 50 journals from IEEE, IET, Elsevier, Springer. He is also Associate Editor or Guest Editor of 6 international peer-reviewed journals. His technology transfer activity includes collaborations with big companies (STMicroelectronics, Renesas, Selex, Ericsson, Piaggio, Valeo, Magna, AMS) and SMEs, with 17 international patents. He is co-founder and CTO of Ingeniars srl, a spin-off company of the University of Pisa. He served as project or WP manager in several national and international projects. He is associate member of the INFN, of the National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT) and for Informatics (CINI), and of the EU networks of excellence NEWCOM and HIPEAC.
