Research Articles (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)

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Capacitive seat sensors for multiple occupancy detection using a low-cost setup
(IEEE -- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2013-02) Zeeman, Adriaan Siebrits; Booysen, Marthinus J.; Ruggeri, Giuseppe; Lagana, Bruno
The Minibus public transportation sector and road safety remains a significant challenge in Africa. We propose a low cost system to monitor the taxi industry and encourage safe driving. A low cost capacitive proximity sensor for seat occupancy detection based on the loading mode capacitive sensing technique is designed. The capacitive sensor uses a single electrode to detect an occupant. We use ZigBee modules for a dynamic wireless system integration where sensors can be added or removed without modifications. A mathematical model of the capacitive sensor is developed and we determine the capacitance on the sensor’s electrode. The occupied capacitance is double the unoccupied capacitance. Our results show that the proposed capacitive sensor can distinguish clearly between an unoccupied and occupied seat.
Detecting potholes using simple image processing techniques and real-world footage
Nienaber, S.; Booysen, Marthinus J.; Kroon, R. S.
Potholes are a nuisance, especially in the developing world, and can often result in vehicle damage or physical harm to the vehicle occupants. Drivers can be warned to take evasive action if potholes are detected in real-time. Moreover, their location can be logged and shared to aid other drivers and road maintenance agencies. This paper proposes a vehicle-based computer vision approach to identify potholes using a window-mounted camera. Existing literature on pothole detection uses either theoretically constructed pothole models or footage taken from advantageous vantage points at low speed, rather than footage taken from within a vehicle at speed. A distinguishing feature of the work presented in this paper is that a thorough exercise was performed to create an image library of actual and representative potholes under different conditions, and results are obtained using a part of this library. A model of potholes is constructed using the image library, which is used in an algorithmic approach that combines a road colour model with simple image processing techniques such as a Canny filter and contour detection. Using this approach, it was possible to detect potholes with a precision of 81.8% and recall of 74.4.%.
Detection of reckless driving in the Sub-Saharan informal public transportation system using acceleration-sensing telematics
(IEEE -- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2013-07) Schietekat, Justin M.; Booysen, Marthinus J.
Many lives are lost annually in Sub-Saharan Africa’s unique and vibrant informal public transportation system due to accidents caused by reckless driving, fatigue, and illegal overloading. Fleet management has been used extensively to determine the location of mobile assets in the event of theft, or as part of operational management. One of the main objectives of the work presented in this paper, is to build on existing fleet management systems to improve safety and drastically reduce road accidents and the unnecessary loss of lives. Through a thorough literature survey it was concluded that existing work on vehicle tracking and reporting systems, do not use accelerometers to monitor or detect reckless driving, despite the obvious advantages. Similar to other tracking devices, this project uses global positioning to determine position and velocity, but this project also incorporates the use of a 3-axis accelerometer augmented by a theoretical behavioral model to detect and report reckless behavior to a central online server. The accelerometer results show a clear difference between safe and reckless driving.
Drone-based traffic flow estimation and tracking using computer vision
De Bruin, A.; Booysen, Marthinus J.
Traffic management has become increasingly important with growth in vehicle numbers unmatched by investment in infrastructure. A large part of management is measuring traffic flow. Video footage of traffic flow is normally manually checked to determine key traffic metrics, consuming many human hours. Moreover, installation and maintenance cost of recording equipment and supporting infrastructure is substantial, especially in the Sub-Saharan context. This paper proposes a novel solution to automate traffic flow estimation, using computer vision. The paper also introduces the notion of making the recording equipment mobile by using drone-based equipment, negating the need for fixed recording installations. The results demonstrate measurement accuracies of 100% down to 81% from ideal to worst case conditions, and successful implementation of drone control algorithms.
ITsPhone : an Integrated Platform for Participatory ITS Data Collection and Opportunistic Transfer
(IEEE, 2013) Briante, O.; Campolo, C.; Iera, A.; Molinaro, A.; Paratore, S. Y.; Ruggeri, G.; Booysen, Marthinus J.
The recent advances in sensing and communication technologies pave the way for interfacing cars with smartphones to offer value-added services to users on the road. Kinematics, automotive diagnostics, passengers load, and pollution data can be provided by vehicles, augmented with external sensors, to make the road transport greener and smarter. With the purpose of supporting and improving data collection and distribution, by boosting user participation, in this work a smartphone-based platform is demonstrated that exploits cheap dedicated hardware to interact with sensors on board and in the vehicle’s surroundings and opportunistically leverages available wireless connectivity to remotely transmit collected data.
On the use of WiMAX and Wi-Fi in a VANET to provide in-vehicle connectivity and media distribution
(IEEE -- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2013-02) Mojela, Lerotholi S.; Booysen, Marthinus J.
The recent emergence of ubiquitous wireless connectivity and the increasing computational capacity of modern vehicles have triggered immense interest in the possibilities of vehicular connectivity. A plethora of potential applications for vehicular networks have been proposed in the areas of safety, traffic infrastructure management, information, and entertainment. The broad range of applications requires creative utilization of the available wireless medium, using a combination of existing and novel wireless technologies. In this paper we evaluate one such configuration, assuming dedicated short range communication for safety applications, and using Wi-Fi and WiMAX for non-safety applications. Little is known about the media streaming performance of these wireless technologies in realistic vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) scenarios. Due to the extreme mobility and unpredictable environmental aspects in a real road environment, we perform and present an empirical evaluation. We evaluate a multi-vehicle to infrastructure (V2V2I) VANET, using Wi-Fi for the vehicle-to-vehicle communication and WiMAX for the vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication.
Performance evaluation of neighbor-awareness at the Media Access Control (MAC) layer for Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs)
(IEEE -- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2013-06) Booysen, Marthinus J.; Van Rooyen, Gert-Jan
Efficient medium access in Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) remains a significant challenge. Two types of Media Access Control (MAC) approaches have been proposed, namely contention-based and contention-free. We propose a novel MAC approach called Discretized RAndom Medium Access (DRAMA) for VANET. DRAMA is based on a contentionfree MAC, but unlike existing contention-free approaches, it is neighbor-agnostic. We evaluate the effect on performance of taking away all forms of channel coordination, thereby essentially removing neighbor awareness from an existing MAC approach. The evaluation is performed in terms of packet delivery ratio, receiver throughput, and end-to-end latency. We also present a performance evaluation of DRAMA and compare it to the IEEE 802.11p standard for various traffic scenarios. The results show that removing awareness from a MAC has a similar effect on performance to reducing awareness, in terms of number of hops used. Our performance results demonstrate performance improvements of 48%, 130%, and 73% over IEEE 802.11p in terms of packet delivery ratio, receiver throughput, and end-to-end latency, respectively.
Proof of concept : large-scale monitor and control of household water heating in near real-time
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013-07) Booysen, Marthinus J.; Engelbrecht, J. A. A.; Molinaro, A.
Two fundamental challenges for efficient energy management are the lack of timely demand and consumption information at the distribution level, and inability to responsively control supply at that level. With recent advances made in wireless communications and machine-to-machine (M2M) networking, a plethora of new solutions have been proposed for smart-grid and home automation. The many approaches, however, focus on the communications and technological domains of these solutions. In this paper we present the design and results of a proof-of-concept project, in which 18 homes were equipped to remotely monitor and control hot water cylinders in real time. The system makes use of the SMART platform to collect and collate telemetry data, and to deliver commands through the use of a cellular network. Users can set the on-off times of their water heating, and also monitor the consumption on a daily basis, in energy or monetary units. The data is centrally processed to provide useful information to the utility, such as the expected total demand for the system in 15 minute intervals, detected leaks, sudden drops in pressure, anode depletion, and to control each cylinder individually. In this paper we look at the system design and highlight some key results.
Using thermal transients at the outlet of electrical water heaters to recognise consumption patterns for heating schedule optimisation
(IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2015-07) Nel, P. J. C.; Booysen, Marthinus J.; Van Der Merwe, B.
In the midst of environmental concerns, and soaring energy costs and energy shortages, the efficiency of electrical household water heaters (EWHs) has been identified as an area with significant potential for savings. The benefits of applying optimised scheduling control for EWHs has been proven by various studies, however, little has been done to measure individual behaviour. This paper presents an alternative to the invasive and expensive solution of using water flow meters. A hardware and algorithmic solution is presented that uses thermal transients at the outlet of an EWH to measure consumption patterns. The results show that the approach is able to detect usage events with an accuracy of 91%. Despite the challenges related to thermal inaccuracies, event durations are estimated to within 2 minutes accuracy 79% of the time.
Vehicle acceleration estimation using smartphone-based sensors
Bruwer, F. J.; Booysen, Marthinus J.
Recent advances in smartphone technology, including motion sensing and wireless communications, have resulted in these devices being used for vehicle-based driver behaviour sensing applications, replacing existing bespoke vehicle-based solutions. Acceleration is normally used as the primary indicator for recklessness. Despite the many benefits of using a smartphone to determine vehicle acceleration, the mobility of the phone relative to the vehicle, and the vehicle relative to the earth, causes the earth's gravitational force to obscure the true vehicle acceleration as perceived by the phone. The design and test results in this paper demonstrate how quaternions and an unscented Kalman filter can be used to remove the gravitational vector from the sensed acceleration, which enables reckless driving detection.

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