Impressive Technical Progress Seen on Many Fronts:  Experts Gather Again for IV2003
IVsource.net
17 June 2003

Sponsored by the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Council, the 2003 Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV2003) attracted about 100 technical experts and academic researchers from around the world to Columbus, Ohio during June 9-11.  Impressive progress was evident in many areas, including machine vision, data fusion, and inter-vehicle communications.

Sponsored by the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Council, the 2003 Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV2003) attracted about 100 technical experts and academic researchers from around the world.  Dr. Umit Ozguner of Ohio State University served as General Chair and host for the meeting, which was held in Columbus, Ohio during June 9-11.

The IV conferences have been going for several years now, with locations rotating around the world.  IV2002 was held in Versailles, France and IV2004 will be in Parma, Italy.  The conferences typically attract a small but highly expert group, and are excellent venues for academic researchers to interact with research and development engineers from the vehicle industry.

For instance, this year’s meeting saw engineers attending from Bosch, DaimlerChrysler, Delco Delphi, Denso, Ford, General Motors, Honda Americas, Toyota Technical Center, and Volkswagen.  The single-track format created a focused environment, and numerous poster sessions provided for relaxed and in-depth interactions with researchers from universities worldwide.

The event started on the morning of Sunday, June 8, with a conference tutorial entitled “Overview of Intelligent Vehicle Systems: Worldwide Trends and Next Steps,” offered by consultant Richard Bishop.  This was followed with transportation to the Transportation Research Center test track for vehicle demonstrations that afternoon.

A quick comparison with meetings of previous years shows an increased emphasis this time on practical approaches to inter-vehicle communications, data fusion, driver analysis/monitoring, as well as optimized and more sophisticated approaches to obstacle detection.  As in last year’s conference, pedestrian detection remained a hot topic.  Laser-based scene understanding continued to dominate university-based research, and a new toy – the 360-degree camera – is proving to be useful in scene understanding as well, particularly at intersections.  The 360-degree coverage is achieved by a single camera mounted with a rotating mirror – the resulting full-circle video is stitched together in software to provide a comprehensive image.

Stereo vision techniques seemed to be de-emphasized somewhat, as researchers are doing more and more with single cameras.  For instance, the MobilEye system, which uses a single camera to perform adaptive cruise control, forward obstacle detection, and other functions, received significant attention – experts from commercial companies who were initially skeptical of the viability of this approach walked away from the MobilEye booth impressed with the capability achieved.  However, stereo vision is still strong in the driver monitoring domain, as shown by the SeeingMachines FaceLAB system, which instantly locked onto the eyes and head of visitors to their demonstration booth.  The FaceLAB supports driver research and vehicle cockpit design as well as offering the potential for real-time driver monitoring in safety applications. 

Rising in prominence is the application of vehicle intelligence to improvements in traffic flow, which was addressed from several angles, including vehicle communications and traffic simulation. 

The week’s events concluded with a tour and reception at the Ohio State University Center for Automotive Research and Intelligent Transportation, which was hosted by Honda R&D Americas, the benefactor of the Center.

IV2004 will be chaired by Dr. Alberto Broggi of the University of Parma and hosted there during June 14-17.  The program will include both technical presentations and vehicle demonstrations, with a possibility of also visiting the Ferrari facility nearby.  

The Call for Papers for IV2004 has been published, and abstracts are requested by December 1.

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