Low Cost Driving Trainer Assistance System

doi:10.4236/jtts.2012.21007

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Journal of Transportation Technologies, 2012, 2, 63-66

http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jtts.2012.21007 Published Online January 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jtts)

Low Cost Driving Trainer Assistance System

Roy Adarsha, Anandha Krishna Arun Kumar, Kaliyaperumal Ganesan*

TIFAC Centre of Relevance and Excellence in Automotive Infotronics, VIT University, Vellore, India

Email: *[email protected]

Received October 4, 2011; revised November 7, 2011; accepted November 24, 2011

ABSTRACT

The multiple tasks involved in real-time driv ing are challengin g task s for any new learner of driv ing. The pro pos ed Low

Cost Driving Trainer Assistance System (DTAS) helps the amateur drivers to learn the basic skills involved while driv-

ing a vehicle, in particular a 4 wheeler like a car. The proposed system not only helps the novice drivers to gain confi-

dence but also saves money spent on fuels while learning. The proposed DTAS system uses a steering wheel, an accel-

erator pedal, a brake pedal, gear mechanism and virtual (simulated) road environment. We also monitor and record the

vital system parameters during the training period and analyze the same. The proposed DTAS involves operations like

taking a turn, braking, accelerating, using dashboard functions and changing gears.

Keywords: Driving Trainer Assistance System; Gear Position Sensing; Steering Angle; Data Acquisition System

1. Introduction

In modern days, more number of vehicles is plying on

the road than the number of people on the road. Hence

training an amateur driver to get used to the road envi-

ronment becomes essential before driving the vehicle on

the road. Some of the basic skills required to drive a ve-

hicle are simulated on a PC. We use some of the second

hand (off the shelf) hardware components such as steer-

ing wheel, gear box, brake, accelerator, etc and acquire

the necessary data and interface them with the software

simulator running on a PC.

Various essential test cases involving multiple actions

are pre sented to the u ser, and the user was ask ed to oper-

ate relevant hardware depending on the contexts shown

in the form of text messages or videos on the PC screen.

The actions performed by the user are recorded and in-

stantaneously measured against relevant set of threshold

values. Subsequent lessons are presented based on the

user’s reaction time. Thus a novice user can learn various

multiple tasks quickly by sitting in front of a PC. The

hardware interfaced is made up of second hand compo-

nents of a vehicle and hence the user gets the feeling of

driving a real vehicle.

Figure 1 shown below is a survey carried out by In-

dian Journal of Neuro Trauma [1]. In Figure 1, the first

bar is the number of people dying due to unnatural deaths

and the second bar is due to road accidents. From this it

is evident that road accidents cause considerable number

of deaths every year. Even though these numbers are

stable, there is a possibility to bring them down using

technology based solutions. From our informal interac-

tion with many novice drivers, we understand that they

are always nervous and tense while driving on the road.

The proposed system complements the conventional

driving and is expected to offer confidence to the novice

drivers.

A system (consisting of both the hardware and soft-

ware) has been developed to simulate the real time driv-

ing conditions, called driving simulator. The proposed

Driving simulator can also be used for the following

purposes:

 For training;

 For Research works;

 For Testing purpose;

 For the analysis of driver behaviour.

*Corresponding author. Figure 1. Survey of unnatural deaths by IJNT.

R. ADARSHA ET AL.

A problem in many of the conventional driving simu-

lators is that the training schemes provided by the sys-

tems are fixed and the systems cannot offer intelligent

plan of training for different people according to their

driving skills and abilities [2]. But these devices are

known to be effective for tests that would be dangerous

for actual vehicles on test courses and for tests where a

vehicle must be driven under certain harsh environmental

conditions [3].

Most of the currently available driving training simu-

lation systems use the 3D dynamic simulated graphics

generator and high clarity display with large screen to

generate the scene of road which makes it costly to be

implemented [4]. It is also difficult to develop this simu-

lator using other specialized software such as virtual re-

ality in the market. For this reason, we design a low cost

simulator that not only uses second hand hardware com-

ponents but also uses virtual instrumentation software

such as LabVIEW which is normally used at educational

institutions. The advantages of using this software are:

1) Easy signal acquisition and conditioning.

2) Test results can be recorded and analyzed simulta-

neously.

3) Attractive Graphical User Interface (GUI) can be

created and thus can be made more user friendly.

4) More functionalities (associated with multi func-

tional switching and lighting) can be added easily. Thus

it is a scalable approach.

The present work has been organized in the paper as

follows. Section 2 talks about the various software, hard-

ware and models used. In Section 3, we discuss about

how the simulator was developed. Section 4 discusses the

evaluation technique used and finally Section 5 gives the

conclusions drawn.

2. Designs and Development

2.1. Hardware

User Interface—This is used mainly to take the driving

inputs from the driver. This includes operation s like turn-

ing, accelerating and braking. Some of the second hand

hardware we have used in our implementation are shown

in Figure 2 below. The not a b le com p on ents used are:

 Steering wheel;

 Brake and accelerate pedal;

 Gear Box;

 Headlamp & Indicators.

2.2. Acquisition Devices

One has to acquire the signals from the hardware devices

whenever they are used and feed the same to the simula-

tor for further analysis. We have used the following data

acquisition units for our implementation.

Figure 2. The hardware platform used for data ac quistion.

 CompactRIO Chassis: This is a hardware by National

Instruments for the acquisition module to work.

 Analog input output module—cRIO9215—This is the

hardware to convert the real time signa ls into a format

that the simulator can use.

 Simulation Computer: The normal computers based

on X86 processor with necessary processing power

and storage capacity.

2.3. Software

LabVIEW (short for Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation

Engineering Workbench) is a platform and development

environment for a visual programming language. The

advantage of LabVIEW is the extensive support for ac-

cessing instrumentation hardware. Drivers and abstrac-

tion layers for many different types of instruments and

buses are included or are available as graphical nodes.

The abstraction layers offer standard software interfaces

to communicate with hardware devices. The driver inter-

faces available in LabVIEW save program development

time.

In our implementation we have used a new hardware

driver topology (DAQmxBase) , which consists mainly of

G-coded components with only a few register calls

through NI Measurement Hardware DDK (Driver De-

velopment Kit) function. This provides platform inde-

pendent hardware access to many data acquisition and

instrumentation devices. These features are useful in ac-

quiring the signals from the hardware that are interfaced

with the simulator.

2.4. Proposed Model

The proposed model consists of a driving operation sys-

tem, simulation control system and vision simulation

system, knowledge base and an evaluation system as

shown in Figure 3 below.

R. ADARSHA ET AL. 65

Figure 3. Working model.

1) Database: The database part of the block diagram

includes the database, knowledge base, visual base and

an evaluation system where all the values required for the

evaluation of the task and the vehicle environment videos

are stored.

2) Operational and control part: This part includes the

driving operation system, simulation control system, vi-

sion simulation system and kinematics simulation system.

All these are useful in actuating the necessary control

actions.

3) User: Depending on the user, the values from the

component enters the operation part which is then evalu-

ated by the database part.

3. Simulator Development

The simulator is designed in such a way that a vid eo will

be continuously running on the GUI displayed on a PC

monitor and depending on the situation (shown on the

video), the driver has to react. For example, if a particu-

lar situation occurs at the 12th second, the user has to

react within few seconds (depending on the critically of

the event occurred). Thus the driver is monitored to see

whether necessary actions are performed by him or not.

Some of the operations that are simulated in our study

are as follows:

1) Accelerate: Here the user has to apply some pres-

sure on the accelerator pedal. If the user is not doing so

within a certain time limit, then the u ser is forced to do it

again.

2) Brake: In this task the user has to apply certain pres-

sure on the brake peda l within certain time limit depend-

ing on the context or speed limits shown on the video.

3) Turn: Here the user has to turn the steering wheel to

the left or right hand side as shown by DTAS.

4) Gear box: Here the user has to change the gear de-

pending up on the speed of the vehicle.

5) Headlamp: Here the user has to switch the head-

lamp between dim and dip mode based on the speed of

the vehicle.

6) Indicator: Here the user has to operate the indicator

before turning.

7) Multiple operations: This involves multiple things

like combination of acceleratio n, braking, turning to left/

right and changing relevant gears.

The simulator is designed in such a way that it not

only checks the ability of the user to perform the basic

tasks of driving, but also checks the concentration of the

driver. This is done by giving random tasks that need

multiple operations (which are time critical) to the user.

Each task that the user has to perform is verified to be

correct if the corresponding parameters of the operation

obtained from the DAQ device or indicator controls is

within the range set in the knowledge base. This is ex-

plained in Figure 4.

If the task fails, the user has to perform the task again

and if he fails more than three times then he has to restart

the simulator. The task is also rendered failed if the user

is not able to respond within a stipulated time. The tim-

ing and other knowledge base values can be set by the

trainer by manipulating the knowledge base which is

kept separately for this purpose.

3.1. Front Panel Design

The front panels consists of a speedometer to give the

feeling of real time dashboard, indicators for turning,

task status indicator, gear shift position indicator, picture

indicator which tells the user to do a certain task, LED to

indicate up to what limit a certain operation has to be

done for a given task. The speed is calculated using the

equation: vuat



 (1)

Here “v” is the final velocity, “u” is th e initial velocity

and “a” is the acceleration from the accelerator pedal and

“t” is the time taken from the start of the task.

Figure 5 shown below is one of the front panel GUI

used by the user while learning driving. The GUI not

only gives text and image based instructions to the user

and also displays the real time data (as is normally show n

in the vehicle). The LED indicator informs the user about

the timing information. Thus by looking at this single

interface a user can understand how quickly he is learn-

ing the driving lessons. The interface can also be cus-

tomized according to the user level.

3.2. LabVIEW Design

The block diagram design shown in Figure 5 above con-

sists of five parts as explained below:

1) To start with, the first part fetches the information

from the knowledge base about what task one has to do

and the corresponding ideal parameters to the evaluation

part.

2) DAQ assistant part is used to acquire the signals

generated by the sensors which are attached with the con-

trols.

3) Evaluation part: The driver’s proficiency is evaluated

R. ADARSHA ET AL.

Figure 4. The task evaluation model.

Figure 5. GUI design used in one of the training modules.

based on the various inputs like steering position, gear

position, brake pedal pressure, accelerator pedal pressure,

etc. The brake and accelerator pressure are evaluated

together by calculating the speed using the Equation (1).

Along with th ese, the sequen ce of operations is also eva-

luated here. For example, to take a turn one has to reduce

the speed by braking, shifting gears and then steering to

turn.

4) Visual Interface: This part enables the driver to see

the road condition s as if there is a cockpit in a car. Video

data base has been used. Depending on various circum-

stances the driver has to act within certain time limit as

decided by the timi ng pa rt .

5) Timing part: For each task, the learner has to do the

tasks depending on the road conditions shown to him. A

standard reaction time is set for evaluating the reaction

time of the driver.

4. Evaluation Techniques and Trainer

Also, multiple tasks with parallel data acquisition is de-

signed to test the driver concentration on each of the ve-

hicle controls. This is done by evaluating the tasks and in

parallel running another while loop for data acquisition.

n Ambassador car gear box is taken and an array of

infrared sensor system is deployed to check the gear po-

sition for the evalua tion of the correct gear position for a

given speed [5]. In the proposed trainer system, speed is

taken as the reference signal while th e steering angle and

the gear position data are used for evaluation purpose.

5. Conclusion

There are many commercially available DTAS in the

market. But most of them are very expensive. An attempt

is made to design a low-cost driver trainer assistance

system. The hardware peripherals used are second hand

(used) ones. The software made is to run on a general

purpose common PC to reduce the cost further. One can

add more modules (both hardware and software) and

scale the same if new driving rules emerge. It can be

customized according to people and region. A user gets a

real time feeling and also can learn as much as he wants

without spending on fuel costs. The logged information

is useful for evaluating the drivers. The proposed system

complements the conventional driving.

6. Acknowledgements

This work forms part of the Research and Development

activities of TIFAC-CORE in Automotive Infotronics,

VIT University, and Vellore, India. The authors would

like to thank the Centre for providing necessary hardware

and software support. Adarsh Roy and Arun Kumar

would like to acknowledge Miss. Shalini, Development

Engineer and Mr. Saravanan, Development Engineer for

the help rendered.

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