| Summary: | The future of mobility will be connected, cooperative and autonomous. All vehicles on
the road will communicate with each other as well as with the infrastructure. Traffic will
be mixed and human-driven vehicles will coexist alongside self-driving vehicles of
different levels of automation. This mobility model will bring greater safety and
efficiency in driving, as well as more sustainable and inclusive transport.
For this future to be possible, vehicular communications, as well as perception systems,
become indispensable. Perception systems are capable of understanding the
environment and adapting driving behaviour to it (following the trajectory, adjusting
speed, overtaking manoeuvres, lane changes, etc.). However, these autonomous systems
have limitations that make their operation not possible in certain circumstances (low
visibility, dense traffic, poor infrastructure conditions, etc.). This unexpected event
would trigger the system to transfer control to the driver, which could become an
important safety weakness. At this point, communication between different elements of
the road network becomes important since the impact of these unexpected events can be
mitigated or even avoided as long as the vehicle has access to dynamic road information.
This information would make it possible to anticipate the disengagement of the
automated system and to adapt the driving task or prepare the control transfer less
abruptly.
In this thesis, we propose to develop a road monitoring system that, installed in vehicles
travelling on the road network, performs automatic auscultation of the status of the
infrastructure and can detect critical events for driving. In the context of this research
work, the aim is to develop three independent modules: 1) a system for detecting fog
and classifying the degree of visibility; 2) a system for recognising traffic signs; 3) a
system for detecting defects in road lines. This solution will make it possible to generate
cooperative services for the communication of critical road events to other road users. It
will also allow the inventory of assets to facilitate the management of maintenance and
investment tasks for infrastructure managers. In addition, it also opens the way for
autonomous driving by being able to better manage transitions of control in critical
situations and by preparing the infrastructure for the reception of self-driving vehicles
with high levels of automation.
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