Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : December 01, 2021 - December 03, 2021
Trams are widely used for clean public transportation, but little research has been performed on the automatic operation of trams. However, it is thought that such automatic operation will be considered in the future. For automatic operation of trams, it will be necessary to detect obstacles in front of the vehicle in real time and to control the braking of the vehicle when obstacles are detected. This paper proposes a method for detecting obstacles using a stereo camera installed in front of the vehicle. The proposed system can be division three steps. First, template matching is performed to estimate the railway track position. Next, the predicted area considering vehicle gauge is calculated based on the railway track position. Finally, obstacle detection is performed inside the predicted area considering vehicle gauge using the distance image obtained from the stereo camera. When the object larger than the certain value, the proposed system controls the braking of the vehicle. The effectiveness of the proposed system is investigated using a 1/10 scale model experimental vehicle, and the verification results show the feasibility of the proposed system.
