Law enforcement in the ocean

The combating of the present great variety of criminal activities occurring at sea mainly involves measures to be taken on land, in particular in ports.However, also actual enforcement at sea will continue to play an essential (complementary) role. This article surveys the rules of international law governing law enforcement measures at sea. These rules are complex, because distinctions have to be made between the various jurisdictional zones at sea and between the positions of the flag state, the coastal state and the port state. Traditionally, ships in the high seas (all sea areas beyond a narrow band of territorial sea) were under the exclusive jurisdiction of the flag state. In an increasing number of situations, the coastal state now has law enforcement authority over foreign ships in expanded areas up to 200 nautical miles offshore. But apart from these situations, flag state jurisdiction still prevails beyond the territorial sea. This makes effective law enforcement difficult. In practice, many obstacles can be overcome by making more effective use of the authority of the port state, and by concluding new international agreements providing for specific enforcement systems.     

Ship-berth link performance evaluation: simulation and analytical approaches

In this paper we consider the performance evaluation of ship-berth link in port. The efficiency of operations and processes on the ship-berth link has been analysed through the basic operating parameters such as berth utilization, average number of ships in waiting line, average time that a ship spends in waiting line, average service time of a ship, average total time that a ship spends in port, average quay crane (QC) productivity and average number of QCs per ship. All the main performances of the ship-berth link are given. This is one of the problems faced by planners and terminal operators in ports. In this paper, we propose two models based on simulation and queuing theory, respectively, in order to determine the performance evaluation of ship-berth link in port. Numerical results and computational experiments are reported to evaluate the efficiency of the models for Pusan East Container Terminal (PECT).     

Sliding mode robust fault-tolerant control for uncertain systems with time delay

Considering the modeling uncertainties and external disturbance, a kind of sliding mode robust H∞fault-tolerant control method for time delay system with actuator fault is proposed. The upper-bound of the uncertainties is considered as a known constant, while the upper-bound of the actuator fault is unknown. A sufficient condition for the existence of an integral sliding mode dynamics is given in terms of linear matrix inequality(LMI). A novel adaptive law is given to estimate the unknown upper-bound of faults. On this basis, a type of sliding mode robust H∞fault-tolerant control law is designed to guarantee the asymptotic stability and the H_∞ performance index of the system. Finally, the simulation on quad-rotor semi-physical platform demonstrates the reliability and validity of the method.     

In-depth understanding of lane changing interactions for in-vehicle driving assistance systems

Lane-changing events are often related with safety concern and traffic operational efficiency due to complex interactions with neighboring vehicles. In particular, lane changes in stop-and-go traffic conditions are of keen interest because these events lead to higher risk of crash occurrence caused by more frequent and abrupt vehicle acceleration and deceleration. From these perspectives, in-depth understanding of lane changes would be of keen interest in developing in-vehicle driving assistance systems. The purpose of this study is to analyze vehicle interactions using vehicle trajectories and to identify factors affecting lane changes with stop-and-go traffic conditions. This study used vehicle trajectory data obtained from a segment of the US-101 freeway in Southern California, as a part of the Next Generation Simulation (NGSIM) project. Vehicle trajectories were divided into two groups; with stop-and-go and without stop-and-go traffic conditions. Binary logistic regression (BLR), a well-known technique for dealing with the binary choice condition, was adopted to establish lane-changing decision models. Regarding lane changes without stop-and-go traffic conditions, it was identified based on the odd ratio investigation that he subject vehicle driver is more likely to pay attention to the movement of vehicles ahead, regardless of vehicle positions such as current and target lanes. On the other hand, the subject vehicle driver in stop-and-go traffic conditions is more likely to be affected by vehicles traveling on the target lane when deciding lane changes. The two BLR models are adequate for lane-changing decisions in normal and stop-and-go traffic conditions with about 80 % accuracy. A possible reason for this finding is that the subject vehicle driver has a tendency to pay greater attention to avoiding sideswipe or rear-end collision with vehicles on the target lane. These findings are expected to be used for better understanding of driver’s lane changing behavior associated with congested stop-and-go traffic conditions, and give valuable insights in developing algorithms to process sensor data in designing safer lateral maneuvering assistance systems, which include, for example, blind spot detection systems (BSDS) and lane keeping assistance systems (LKAS).     

Novel electronic braking system design for EVS based on constrained nonlinear hierarchical control

Both environment protection and energy saving have attracted more and more attention in the electric vehicles (EVs) field. In fact, regarding control performance, electric motor has more advantages over conventional internal combustion engine. To decouple the interaction force between vehicle and various coordinating and integrating active control subsystems and estimate the real-time friction force for Advanced Emergency Braking System (AEBS), this paper’s primary intention is uniform distribution of longitudinal tire-road friction force and control strategy for a Novel Anti-lock Braking System (Nov- ABS) which is designed to estimate and track not only any tire-road friction force, but the maximum tire-road friction force, based on the Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS). The longitudinal tire-road friction force is computed through real-time measurement of breaking force and angular acceleration of wheels. The Magic Formula Tire Model can be expressed by the reference model. The evolution of the tire-road friction is described by the constrained active-set SQP algorithm with regard to wheel slip, and as a result, it is feasible to identify the key parameters of the Magic Formula Tire Model. Accordingly, Inverse Quadratic Interpolation method is a proper way to estimate the desired wheel slip in regards to the reference of tireroad friction force from the top layer. Then, this paper adapts the Nonlinear Sliding Mode Control method to construct proposed Nov-ABS. According to the simulation results, the objective control strategy turns out to be feasible and satisfactory.     

Lubricating performance of carbon nanotubes in internal combustion engines – engine test results for CNT enriched oil

The main purpose of this research is to reduce friction losses by adding carbon nanotubes to engine oil. Extremely favorable tribological properties of carbon nanotubes have been extensively studied on the microscopic scale and using tribometers, have not yet been verified in the engine. Enriching oil with nanotubes can lead to significant, exceeding 7 %, reduction in the motoring torque of the engine at low crankshaft rotational speed. The phenomena associated with the dispersion of carbon nanotubes in the engine are stated and discussed. It has been shown that the oil shear during normal operation of the engine can effectively improve the dispersion of nanotubes. At the same time the oil filtration system removes agglomerates of nanotubes very quickly.     

Design of emergency braking algorithm for pedestrian protection based on multi-sensor fusion

Globally, safety has become an increasingly important issue in the automotive industry. In an attempt to reduce traffic fatalities, UNECE launched a new EU Road Safety Program which aims to decrease the number of road deaths by half by 2020. AEB (Autonomous Emergency Braking) is a very effective active safety system intended to reduce fatalities. This study involves the design of a multi-sensor data fusion strategy and decision-making algorithm for AEB pedestrian. Possible collision avoidance scenarios according to the EuroNCAP protocol are analyzed and a robust pedestrian tracking strategy is proposed. The performance of the AEB system is enhanced by using a braking model to predict the collision avoidance time and by designing the system activation zone according to the relative speed and possible distance required to stop for pedestrians. The AEB activation threshold requires careful consideration. The test results confirm the advantages of the proposed algorithm, the performance of which is described in this paper.     

Development of algorithms for commercial vehicle mass and road grade estimation

Estimation algorithms for road slope angle and vehicle mass are presented for commercial vehicles. It is well known that vehicle weight and road grade significantly affect the longitudinal motion of a commercial vehicle. However, it is very difficult to measure the weight and road slope angle in real time because of lack of sensor technology. In addition, the total weight of a commercial vehicles varies depending on the freight. In this study, the road grade and vehicle mass estimation algorithms are proposed using the RLS (Recursive Least Square) method and only the in-vehicle sensors. The proposed algorithms are verified in experiments using a commercial vehicle under various conditions.