Road-Prophet: Road Adaptive Overtake Assistance System based on See-Through Projector Technology making View Blocking Vehicles Transparent
Problem Statement
Nobody likes being stuck behind a large, slow-moving vehicle on the highway. Not only does it hold you up, but it’s also difficult to see around, in order to check whether or not it’s safe to pass. We have come up with what could someday be a solution to that problem. It’s an augmented reality system that lets drivers see right through the vehicle that they’re following.
Aim
The project proposes a new concept called “Road Adaptive Overtake Assistance System” that assists drivers to safely overtake a view blocking vehicle such as a truck or a bus in a much safer way by looking at the rear projector screen which is showing a view of the road ahead of the truck/bus.
Working
Large vehicles such as transport trucks and buses are equipped with a forward-facing camera on their windshield. When a driver gets stuck behind one of those bigger vehicles, they can simply look at the projector screen at the back of the vehicle receiving live video feed from its windshield camera. As a
result, the driver is able to see what the road in front of the blocking vehicle looks like, in the position that the vehicle occupies on the road.
The video signal captured from a Digital Camera module mounted in the head of the truck and transferred to the Projector Screen at rear end of the vehicle. The camera is fitted on a horizontal swiveling Servo mechanism. This allows the system to turn the camera relative to the orientation of the steering wheels so that looking into the bends is possible while overtaking. A Digital MEMS Compass is used to find the steering wheel angle. This makes the camera position adaptive to the road and thus provides a smarter video output. The system monitors the back of the vehicle upto several meters and turns ON and OFF the projector LCD display automatically according to the presence or absence of a vehicle. This is a smart way to save power. A SONAR sensor is used for this functionality.
Hardware Description
Microcontroller: 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller, LPC1700 for big robot and LPC1300 for little robot.
Digital Camera: A high speed video camera with VGA output and SCCB control
TFT Display: a QVGA resolution color TFT display, used to show the real time video.
Digital MEMS Compass: used to find the steering wheel position
Servo: used to swivel the camera horizontally
SONAR: used to sense a vehicle at the rear end
Battery/Adaptor: used to power all the electronics and motors in the project
Software Tools Used:
Programming Language: Embedded C
Development Tool: LPCXpresso IDE (Eclipse based)
Embedded Protocols Used:
I2C, SPI
Software Libraries Used:
Digital Camera Driver with SCCB control protocol
Graphics Library for TFT display
Digital MEMS Compass device driver via I2C protocol
SONAR sensor device driver
Cortex-M3 peripheral device driver library
CMSIS from ARM
Project Advantages:
• This is a simpler solution and would allow the driver to see what’s in the blind zone before switching lanes.
• There is no lagging in the video stream timing and hence what the screen shows is the real situation in front of that vehicle.
• The system would be useful for all road users including cyclists and pedestrians.
• This system can be useful both during the day and at night.
• Smart road adaptive camera mount that enables viewing into the bend.
• Smart power saving mechanism according to the presence/absence of a vehicle at the rear side.
• A high performance 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller, consuming very low power.