Autonomous Docking Based on Infrared System for Electric Vehicle Charging in Urban Areas

Electric vehicles are progressively introduced in urban areas, because of their ability to reduce air pollution, fuel consumption and noise nuisance. Nowadays, some big cities are launching the first electric car-sharing projects to clear traffic jams and enhance urban mobility, as an alternative to the classic public transportation systems. However, there are still some problems to be solved related to energy storage, electric charging and autonomy. In this paper, we present an autonomous docking system for electric vehicles recharging based on an embarked infrared camera performing infrared beacons detection installed in the infrastructure. A visual servoing system coupled with an automatic controller allows the vehicle to dock accurately to the recharging booth in a street parking area. The results show good behavior of the implemented system, which is currently deployed as a real prototype system in the city of Paris.

[1]  Fawzi Nashashibi,et al.  A complete system to determine the speed limit by fusing a GIS and a camera , 2011, 2011 14th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC).

[2]  Cédric Join,et al.  Numerical differentiation with annihilators in noisy environment , 2009, Numerical Algorithms.

[3]  Jürgen Ackermann,et al.  Robust prevention of limit cycles for robustly decoupled car steering dynamics , 1999, Kybernetika.

[4]  Miguel Ángel Sotelo.  Lateral control strategy for autonomous steering of Ackerman-like vehicles , 2003, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[5]  J. Christian Gerdes,et al.  Modification of vehicle handling characteristics via steer-by-wire , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology.

[6]  Beno Benhabib,et al.  A neural-network approach to high-precision docking of autonomous vehicles/platforms , 2007, Robotica.

[7]  Praveen Subramani.  Design for Implementation: Fully Integrated Charging & Docking Infrastructure Used in Mobility-on-demand Electric Vehicle Fleets , 2012 .

[8]  Ren C. Luo,et al.  Automatic docking and recharging system for autonomous security robot , 2005, 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[9]  Plamen Petrov,et al.  A hybrid control for automatic docking of electric vehicles for recharging , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[10]  Ming Yang,et al.  CyberC3: A Prototype Cybernetic Transportation System for Urban Applications , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[11]  Vicente Milanés Montero,et al.  Cascade Architecture for Lateral Control in Autonomous Vehicles , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[12]  K. Moriwaki.  Mathematical modeling and control of an autonomous electric vehicle for navigation and guidance , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Electric Vehicle Conference.

[13]  Mehdi Etezadi-Amoli,et al.  Rapid-Charge Electric-Vehicle Stations , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery.

[14]  John Boys,et al.  A new IPT magnetic coupler for electric vehicle charging systems , 2010, IECON 2010 - 36th Annual Conference on IEEE Industrial Electronics Society.

[15]  Vicente Milanés Montero,et al.  Autonomous Pedestrian Collision Avoidance Using a Fuzzy Steering Controller , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[16]  M. Fliess,et al.  An algebraic framework for linear identification , 2003 .

[17]  Larry S. Davis,et al.  Model-based object pose in 25 lines of code , 1992, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[18]  Fawzi Nashashibi,et al.  An on-demand personal automated transport system: The CityMobil demonstration in La Rochelle , 2011, 2011 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV).

[19]  Hanumant Singh,et al.  Docking for an autonomous ocean sampling network , 2001 .

[20]  Mayank Bansal,et al.  Vision-based Perception for Autonomous Urban Navigation , 2008, 2008 11th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[21]  Hideki Hashimoto,et al.  Nonlinear GPS models for position estimate using low-cost GPS receiver , 2003, Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[22]  Anne Harris.  Charge of the electric car - [power electric vehicles] , 2009 .

[23]  Vicente Milanés Montero,et al.  Design and Implementation of a Neuro-Fuzzy System for Longitudinal Control of Autonomous Vehicles , 2022 .

[24]  Ljubo Vlacic,et al.  Autonomous Driving Manoeuvres in Urban Road Traffic Environment: A Study on Roundabouts , 2011 .

[25]  Christian Laugier,et al.  Motion generation and control for parking an autonomous vehicle , 1996, Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[26]  Vicente Milanés Montero,et al.  Smooth path and speed planning for an automated public transport vehicle , 2012, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[27]  Vicente Milanés Montero,et al.  Autonomous vehicle based in cooperative GPS and inertial systems , 2008, Robotica.

[28]  Gaurav S. Sukhatme,et al.  Staying alive: a docking station for autonomous robot recharging , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[29]  Subhash Challa,et al.  Autonomous Vehicles Navigation with Visual Target Tracking: Technical Approaches , 2008, Algorithms.

[30]  Li-Chen Fu,et al.  Incorporating appearance and edge features for vehicle detection in the blind-spot area , 2010, 13th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[31]  Riccardo Cassinis,et al.  Docking and Charging System for Autonomous Mobile Robots , 2005 .

[32]  Xinzheng Zhang,et al.  Sensor Fusion of Monocular Cameras and Laser Rangefinders for Line-Based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) Tasks in Autonomous Mobile Robots , 2012, Sensors.

[33]  Cédric Join,et al.  Non-linear estimation is easy , 2007, Int. J. Model. Identif. Control..

[34]  Anis Laouiti,et al.  Cybercar Cooperation for Safe Intersections , 2006, 2006 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference.

[35]  Fawzi Nashashibi,et al.  A real-time robust global localization for autonomous mobile robots in large environments , 2010, 2010 11th International Conference on Control Automation Robotics & Vision.

[36]  Miguel Ángel Sotelo,et al.  Interoperable Control Architecture for Cybercars and Dual-Mode Cars , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.