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Vehicular Applications Group

Research Topics

RCAS

The research interests of the Vehicular Applications Group lie in the area of novel systems that combine robust navigation, ad-hoc communications and information processing. We are addressing applications such as safety-of-life relevant cooperative assistance systems for vehicles and collision avoidance systems for vehicles and trains, dynamic coupling of trains, ubiquitous and context aware pedestrian navigation, and activity estimation of pedestrians. Our work is conducted at experimental, simulative and theoretical levels. Much of our activity in the areas of navigation is at the signal processing level with the goal of assessing and improving the performance of future navigation systems in challenging environmental scenarios such as heavy shadowing and multipath or under interference from other signal sources. Many of the problems we address can be formulated as estimation or decision problems and require a good understanding of underlying models, such as utilities, process and sensor models. We make a strong effort to validate our approaches in real world experiments and early prototypes.

The following list describes our current main topics and research activities:

• Development of a collision avoidance system for railways
• Development of novel co-operative driver assistance systems based on vehicle-to-vehicle communications and sensor fusion
• Intelligent information exchange
• Robust communications for saftey of live (SOL) applications
• Probabilistic localization and mapping for railways (RailSLAM) based on GNSS, IMU, and magnetic sensors
• Relative positioning for dynamic coupling of trains and cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC)
• Metrics to assess robust and reliable communications and navigation methods for SOL applications such as update delay (inter reception time, inter arrival time), latency, etc.
• Sensor fusion with Bayesian filtering
• Research, development and prototyping of indoor navigation systems for pedestrians, based on INS, magnetic sensors, GNSS, human motion models and maps including cooperative Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)
• Development of Bayesian context inference of human physical activities
   

Current Projects and Activities:

• Next Generation Car (NGC) Fahrzeugintelligenz und mechatronisches Fahrwerk (FiF): Within this project we investigate new sensor fusion techniques using differential GNSS, inertial sensors and radar to obtain accurate and reliable relative localization of vehicles for safety-critical applications. We also research ITS-G5 inter-vehicle communications for cooperative maneuvers in emergency situations. Further on, novel techniques are developed to optimize the current Car-to-Car communications standard and new inter-vehicle communications concepts under the name of ITS-G5++ are designed and evaluated.
• Next Generation Train (NGT): This DLR research project aims at shortening travel times with comfortable and energy-efficient rail vehicles to replace intra-European air traffic. We contribute to the development of a virtual coupling system utilizing reliable direct train-to-train communication links and multi-sensor relative positioning algorithms that shall allow dynamic connection and disconnection of train sets on the fly.
• TrackScan: This DLR Project aims at providing reliable forecasts of faults for early preventive maintenance of railway tracks. Within this project, we research algorithms that exploit location dependent magnetic field disturbances and vibrations for improving simultaneous localization and mapping of railways (RailSLAM).
• RHINOS (Railway High Integrity Navigation Overlay System): The EU project will define a GNSS-based system to support the localization of trains respecting the challenging requirements of the railway safety standards. Within this project, we develop algorithms to provide an improved train odometry, i.e. velocity and displacement estimation along the 1D track with inertial measurement units. For more information see http://www.radiolabs.it/rhinos/
• Roll2Rail: This EU project is one of the lighthouse projects of Shift2Rail within the Horizon 2020 programme. Thirty-one European partners are working on the development of key technologies, increasing reliability in the railway sector and reducing costs. We contribute to the development of a new wireless train control and monitoring system by conducting channel measurements and developing channel models for high speed trains as well as simulating physical layer communications. Our research addresses communications between wagons, consists, and virtually coupled trains. For more information see  http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151_read-17514/#/gallery/22712
• SBDist (Sichere und latenzarme Breitbandübertragung über kurze Distanzen): This national project will develop a short range, ultra-reliable and low latency wireless communication system for high data rates and mobile systems, such as wagon-to-wagon communications for trains and truck-trailer systems. Our contributions to the overall project goal are researching and developing signal processing, coding and modulation schemes. These schemes will be tested in simulation as well as with hardware-in-the-loop by using software defined radio (SDR) platforms. In particular, we focus on fine synchronization for distance estimation. For more details see: http://www.industrial-radio.de/Projects/Home/SBDist
• Dependable Navigation: This DLR project focuses on the development of an End-to-End Bayesian Position Estimator for GNSS and additional Sensors. We also explore various fields of opportunity and their use in positioning and SLAM.
• In addition to Dependable Navigation, we are working in close collaboration with industry and government organizations on professional use cases for indoor navigation, such as building inspections or first responders.
   

Selection of Former Funded Projects: