• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.57-66
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• 2015

PURPOSES: Nighttime driving is very different from daytime driving because drivers must obtain nighttime sight-distances based on road lights and headlights. Unfortunately, nighttime driving conditions in Korea are far from ideal due to poor lighting and an insufficient number of road lights and inadequate operation and maintenance of delineators. This study is conducted to develop new standards for nighttime road visibility based on experiments of driver perception for nighttime visibility conditions. METHODS : In the study, perception level and satisfaction of nighttime visibility were investigated. A total of 60 drivers participated, including 34 older drivers and 31 young drivers. To evaluate driver perceptions of nighttime road visibility, fuzzy set theory was used because the conventional analysis methods for driver perception are limited in effectiveness for considering the characteristics of perception which are subjective and vague, and are generally expressed in terms of linguistic terminologies rather than numerical parameters. RESULTS : This study found that levels of nighttime visibility, as perceived by drivers, are remarkably similar to their satisfactions in different nighttime driving conditions with a log-function relationship. Older drivers evaluated unambiguously degree of nighttime visibility but evaluations by young drivers regarding it were unclear. CONCLUSIONS : A minimum value of brightness on roads was established as YUX 30, based on final analyzed results. In other words, road lights should be installed and operated to obtain more than YUX 30 brightness for the safety and comfort of nighttime driving.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.127-134
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• 2016

PURPOSES : Low visibility caused by dark surroundings at nighttime affects the likelihood of accidents, and various efforts, such as installing road safety facilities, have been made to reduce accidents at night. Despite these efforts, the nighttime severity index (SI) in Korea was higher than the daytime SI during 2011-2014. This study determined the factors affecting daytime and nighttime accident severity through a discriminant analysis. METHODS : Discriminant analysis. RESULTS : First, drowsiness, lack of attention, and lighting facilities affected both daytime and nighttime accident severity. Accidents were found to be caused by a low ability to recognize the driving conditions and a low obstacle avoidance capability. Second, road conditions and speeding affected only the daytime accident severity. Third, failure to maintain a safe distance significantly affected daytime accident severity and nonsignificantly affected nighttime accident severity. The majority of such accidents were caused by rear-end collisions of vehicles driving in the same direction; given the low relative speed difference in such cases, the shock imparted by the accidents was minimal. CONCLUSIONS : Accidents caused by a failure to maintain a safe distance has lower severity than do accidents caused by other factors.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.575-584
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• 2010

The aim of study is to suggest the design procedure of automobile headlamp by considering driver's experience in regard of the visibility and glare during nighttime driving. The characteristics of driver were investigated in terms of the drivers' cognitive ability and reaction time, headlamp specification and visibility, light source and glare. And, the degree of visual discomfort was categorized and recognized as a tool to represent the subjective user experience. The UX point of view was stated when the existing results were seemingly lacking of it. The visual comfort and safety of elderly drivers were also discussed by reviewing the studies of ageing regarding the visibility and driving responses. Finally, this study suggested how to reduce the negative effect of nighttime driving due to the height of headlamp, angle of lighting, color spectrum, discomfort glare, source of light by using the UX perspective and methodology.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1999.11a
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• pp.633-636
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• 1999

We present a robust scheme of detecting obstacles such as vehicles, human beings, and other artificial structures that may cause serious traffic accidents in the nighttime driving. Obstacle regions are detected by the evidential reasoning rules that combine the isolated regions obtained by the phase-directed edge-linking and the hot evidence information. Preliminary experimental results show that the performance is robust to nighttime infrared scenes having various types of obstacles

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.107-115
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• 2015

PURPOSES: This study analyzes the characteristics of traffic flow on freeway sections under daytime and nighttime conditions to improve traffic safety, and suggests a method to estimate an accurate freeway capacity value that reflects these characteristics. METHODS : The trends and differences in capacity were investigated using comprehensive field data collected under both daytime and nighttime conditions on freeway sections with designated speeds of 80, 100, and 120 kph. RESULTS : The capacity values under nighttime driving conditions were reduced by 3.3%, 6.9%, and 8.8% at 80, 100, and 120 kph, respectively. Several nighttime adjustment factors were deduced for each designated speed category from the analysis results. CONCLUSIONS : It is expected that more accurate capacity values can be estimated for freeway sections under nighttime conditions by applying the resulting adjustment factors. In addition, traffic safety will be improved through the increased efficiency of traffic management on these freeway sections.

• Atmosphere
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.521-528
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• 2015

In this study star photometry was applied to retrieve aerosol optical thickness (AOT) at night. The star photometry system consisted of small refractor, optical filters, CCD camera, and driving mount and was located in Suwon. The calibration constants were retrieved from the astronomical Langley method but standard deviations of these were more than 10% of the mean values. After the calibration the nighttime AOT was retrieved and cloud-screened in clear six days from 25 Nov. 2014 to 17 Jan. 2015. To estimate the quality of the measurements the nighttime AOT was combined with daytime AOT retrieved from sky-radiometer that was located in Seoul and 17 km away from the star photometry system. In spite of the uncertainty of the calibration constants and the spatial difference of two observation systems, the temporal changes of the nighttime AOT coincided with the daytime. The nighttime ${\AA}ngstr{\ddot{o}}m$ exponent was about 20% lower and more variable than the daytime because of the uncertainty of the calibration constants. If the calibration process is more precise, the combination of star and sun or sky photometry system can monitor the air pollution day and night constantly.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.8-15
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• 2011

This paper presents an effective method for detecting vehicles in front of the camera-assisted car during nighttime driving. The proposed method detects vehicles based on detecting vehicle headlights and taillights using techniques of image segmentation and clustering. First, in order to effectively extract spotlight of interest, a pre-signal-processing process based on camera lens filter and labeling method is applied on road-scene images. Second, to spatial clustering vehicle of detecting lamps, a grouping process use light tracking method and locating vehicle lighting patterns. For simulation, we are implemented through Da-vinci 7437 DSP board with visible light mono-camera and tested it in urban and rural roads. Through the test, classification performances are above 89% of precision rate and 94% of recall rate evaluated on real-time environment.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.1404-1411
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• 2002

A newly developed high intensity discharge (HID) automotive headlamp results in a high luminous gradient at the cutoff line, and proves the superior concept in safer and more com-fortable nighttime driving. This new headlamp technology Provides drivers expanded night vision by a significantly improved light pattern. However, the HID headlamp may dazzle other traffics during traversing a rough road or encountering an unexpected bump. To resolve this problem, an automatic headlamp leveling device is necessary. A preview control is presented for the design of the leveling system. The proposed control algorithm is capable of attenuating a dynamic glare which is one of the major detractors to a driving in dark roads. Computer simulations using ADAMS are carried out to confirm the effectiveness on the control system.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.131-140
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• 2012

Lane markings such as edgelines, centerlines, and lines that delineate lanes generally provide drivers with the various information for safe driving. Drivers can easily recognize the lane markings through the color differences between the markings and road surfaces during the daytime. However, it is a bit difficult for drivers to perceive them during the nighttime due to the lack of artificial lights. Although the glass beads with the 1.5-refractive index have been used to improve the visibility of the lane markings during the nighttime, it is still difficult for drivers to recognize the lane markings properly, especially during the rainy nighttime, which may often lead to traffic accidents. To improve the retroreflectivity and visibility of the lane markings during the rainy nighttime, the high refractive beads with the 2.4-refractive index are essentially required, but they do not work appropriately during the dry nighttime. Thus, the mixed materials with the 1.5, 1.9, and 2.4-refractive beads should be considered for the satisfactory implementation of the lane markings. This study reveals the best mixing rates of the beads by conducting benefit-cost analysis under various weather conditions in Korea. The analysis results show that the lane markings with the 100% of the 2.4-refractive beads provide the highest visibility of lane markings regardless of the roadway conditions, but the benefit-cost (B/C) ratio of the bead mixture is merely 0.46. The best mixing rate of the beads, from the highest B/C ratio viewpoint, was identified as the mixture with a 80% of 1.5-refractive beads and a 20% of 2.4-refractive beads. Some limitations and future research agenda have also been discussed.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.73-83
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• 2019

In this paper, we propose the augmented reality(AR) based driving navigation based on robust lane detection method to dynamic environment changes. The proposed technique uses the detected lane position as a marker which is a key element for enhancing driving information. We propose Symmetrical Local Threshold(SLT) algorithm which is able to robustly detect lane to dynamic illumination environment change such as shadows. In addition, by using Morphology operation and Connected Component Analysis(CCA) algorithm, it is possible to minimize noises in the image, and Region Of Interest(ROI) is defined through region division using a straight line passing through several vanishing points We also propose the augmented reality aided visualization method for Interchange(IC) and driving navigation using reference point detection based on the detected lane coordinates inside and outside the ROI. Validation experiments were carried out to assess the accuracy and robustness of the proposed system in vairous environment changes. The average accuracy of the proposed system in daytime, nighttime, rainy day, and cloudy day is 79.3% on 4600 images. The results of the proposed system for AR based IC and driving navigation were also presented. We are hopeful that the proposed research will open a new discussion on AR based driving navigation platforms, and thus, that such efforts will enrich the autonomous vehicle services in the near future.