Enhancing Road safety for pedestrians while exercising.
Did you know that over the past 10 years, the fatality rate of pedestrians has increased by 53% in the US. In our home state of Colorado, we have seen an 89% increase compared to the last decade. Distracted driving has caused 20% of the car-involved incidents. You shouldn’t need to worry about a car endangering your safety while crossing the street, exercising, or enjoying a peaceful walk around your neighborhood. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a way of notifying motorized vehicles that you, as a pedestrian, are on the road? Wouldn’t you feel better knowing that cars would be aware of your location and presence on the road? Personally, I would be more motivated to get out and enjoy some fresh air while strolling in the evening, with the peace of mind knowing I can be seen by cars. How might we do this? The Highlanders, FRC team 4499, propose a solution to improve the safety of Vulnerable Road Users (VRU). We will strengthen the mental and physical health of walkers, cyclists, runners, wheelchair users, people crossing the street at intersections, and all other non-motorized road users with our solution.
Presentation
Solving this problem starts by making exercising as a pedestrian safer. We present VRUM, Vulnerable Road Users Mission. Our solution is to make exercising as a pedestrian safer and to integrate technologies used with connected/automated vehicle (CAV) industries. We want to take this one step further and make this notification available to all road users, not just CAVs. Whether in a car or exercising in your neighborhood, people carry cell phones with GPS that can log location. The USDOT (US Department of Transportation) and SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) have developed standards for messaging formats to communicate with CAVs and other motorists for general traffic information and weather notification. One of these messages, a Personal Safety Message (PSM), a message that describes a non-motorist location, heading and speed, will be generated from the VRM and sent to motor vehicles smartphone app. We will construct the ability to self-generate a PSM and audibly notify a motorist that a VRU is in the designated geospatial area. Everyone’s location and personally identifiable information (PII) will remain anonymous and encrypted. To integrate our use case, we plan to partner with CDOT and USDOT to develop a platform to test our solution.
Supplimental Document
To solve the problem of pedestrian safety, we will develop a system that connects pedestrians to vehicles using a combination of technologies. These technologies include cell phones, a cross-platform mobile application, cloud storage, and computing, IMUs, GPS, SAE J2735 message standards with SAE 2945/9 implementations. With these resources, we would develop a messaging system to send and receive PSMs between pedestrians and vehicles. The mobile application will generate PSMs and audibly notify motorists of pedestrians nearby. In the future CV, AV and companies like Waze and HERE can use this information for predictive pedestrian analysis and avoidance.
Our business model is to save lives while encouraging outdoor excersising.
Our innovation idea consists of 3 phases. Our presentation for Phase I consits of 3 steps, design, develop, test and implement into a proof of concept application. Click to see our full presentation.
A proof of concept for the movile application has been developed and saple wireframing compelted and working on multiple android phones.
