Study on a road surface sensing system for snow and ice road

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Study on a road surface sensing system for snow and ice road

Ogura, T. / Kageyama, I. / Nasukawa, K. / Miyashita, Y. / Kitagawa, H. / Imada, Y.

The vehicle behaviour is always influenced by the road, especially for the characteristics of friction between the tire and the road. Driver support systems such as ABS or TCS measure the tire behaviour itself and they define the road condition based on the serious condition. From the viewpoint of active safety, therefore, it is desired that a preview system to identify the friction coefficient of the road is constructed. The paper deals with the fundamental research related to the new road surface measuring method as the first step to construct an identification tool for the friction coefficient of the road ahead. Several systems have been proposed for vehicle-mounted road surface measurement. In this research, the difference in the reflection rate of light from each road surface is used to measure the friction coefficient. The measuring system to identify the friction coefficient of the road using the reflection rate of the road surface is discussed. The authors propose the definition of a new albedo value for a new measurement system with additional irradiation. The characteristics of the sensor are outlined. The new system and the conventional system are compared. It is shown that the new measurement system can recognize the difference of the road surfaces between dry, wet, water film, compressed snow, and ice road surface. Image processing for the brightness of the road surface by using the Fourier transform is discussed. The new system can also clearly recognize the difference of the road surfaces also for compressed snow and icy roads.