Toward intelligent driver-assistance and safety warning system

A major problem associated with the rapid growth in automotive production is an increase in traffic congestion and accidents, especially in big cities of China. To solve the problem, the government has been increasing funds for improving the traffic infrastructure, enforcing traffic laws, and educating drivers about traffic regulations. In addition, research institutes have launched R&D projects in driver assistance and safety warning systems. In particular, in 1999, the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Intelligent Control and Systems Engineering Center started the Intelligent Vehicle Platforms project. The project aims to promote the use of intelligent technology for safe, efficient, and smart vehicles and to prototype vehicular electronic and sensory products and systems for the Chinese automotive industry. One of the project's key objectives is to develop a vehicular application-specific operating system (vASOS). The National Science Foundation of China and the CAS Knowledge Innovation Program support the project. Supported by the Vehicular Embedded Computing Platform project, the Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU-"Jiao Tong" means transportation in Chinese) Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and the CAS have collaborated to develop intelligent driver-assistance and safety warning systems for passenger vehicles, particularly GPS-and vision-based systems.