Altair Partnered with Sweden-India Mobility Hack for Safe and Sustainable Transportation
Altair EmployeeEmissions, traffic accidents and ineffective traffic flows are problems shared by all large cities of the world. Sweden and India have therefor joined forces to tackle the important issues regarding safe and sustainable transportation. Altair partnered with the the Swedish Institute in hosting a 42-hour digital hackathon in February 2021, titled - Sweden-India Mobility Hack – Changing the Way We Move The mission of the hackathon was to design, test and execute ideas for the future – with a particular focus on mobility. Students, entrepreneurs and other creatives were invited to join, to help solve these issues and support and propel the ongoing development. Overall, there were more than 1000 registered participants, who hacked between 26th and 28th February on several challenges such as Transport – the key to sustainable Future and Infrastructure for connected vehicles etc. Altair presented a challenge in the Lethal Road Accidents category, called safety by objects, Object detection is an important technology that can be used on live video or on recorded video to identify objects, in essence using software and AI to process images, identify and classify objects. This technology is already used in many applications and by manufacturers within automotive. It is without a doubt that this technology holds great potential for impact within road safety. Still, much is yet to be discovered within this field and the technology can both be improved or used in new innovative ways – be it new algorithms used, or new applications defined. The road is a major mode of transportation in India. The number of road accidents are high in India due to poor infrastructure, potholes and absence of sign boards in certain areas and lack of road safely measures implementations. Object detection (live or in recorded video) can be used to identify -
- Potholes (for road repair)
- Extra bright headlights and illegal vehicle features (for law enforcement)
- Beginning of flyovers, road dividers, barricades (for signboard placement)
- Speed breakers (for signboard placement)
- Pedestrians for pedestrian detection in autonomous driving vehicles etc. (driverless cars)
- Or any other important feature for driving AI (driverless cars)
Participants were asked to come up with a solution for how to improve, implement or apply object detection for improved road safety and were free to use the provided tools and examples, but could also choose to focus on application of the technology (putting it in context). Free Software and training resources were provided for the challenge via this page - https://altairuniversity.com/sweden-india-mobility-hack-safety-by-objects-altair-information-page-2/ with more than 100 participants visiting and benefitting from this page. There were about 80 initial submissions with 40 good submissions, that were evaluated by about 50 Jury members, and the best were chosen as winners in each category. The winning team of Sweden-India Mobility Hack 2021, Challenge "Safety by Objects" in category Leathal road accidents by Altair was Team Pedestrian Safety with solution Pedestrian road cross assist system https://eventornado.com/submission/pedestrian-road-cross-assist-system the details of this solution are as below. According to WHO, around 250,000 pedestrians involved in accidents every year. To solve this problem we have come up with a pedestrian ROAD CROSS ASSIST system which will assist the pedestrians or VRUs to cross the road when the VRU is crossing the road either from the front or from the rear side of stationary vehicle. The system consists of front and rear radars which will scan the approaching vehicles from the front or and rear side. Camera/sensors mounted on front and rear side of vehicle detects pedestrian and warns them if it is safe to cross the road or not based on radar data and audio/visual signaling to VRUs or pedestrians. This is safety feature which will save lives of VRUs. How it Works?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-rjB6ds4S4
Scenario 1: VRUs on rear side of vehicle (RHD)
- VRUs are trying to cross the road and are completely unware about approaching vehicle from blind direction
- Ranging devices on the vehicle helps to find out the oncoming vehicle speed and distance
- In case oncoming vehicle speed is more than 20Kmph or time required to reach rear end of stopped vehicle is less than 10 seconds (less time to react) then,
Programmed ECUs calculates and decision is made to alerts the pedestrian about oncoming vehicle by displaying “STOP” sign along with the audio cue (through buzzer) Scenario 2: VRUs on front side of vehicle (RHD)
- VRUs are trying to cross the road and are completely unware about approving vehicle from blind direction.
- Ranging devices on the vehicle helps to find out the oncoming vehicle speed and distance.
- In case oncoming vehicle speed is more than 20Kmph or time required to reach front end of stopped vehicle is less than 10 seconds (less time to react) then,
Programmed ECUs calculates and decision is made to alerts the pedestrian about oncoming vehicle by displaying “STOP” sign along with the audio cue (through buzzer) Congratulations to all the winners, learn more about Altair Embed, Object detection for road safety and our free software offering to students etc. here - https://altairuniversity.com/sweden-india-mobility-hack-safety-by-objects-altair-information-page-2/