VSmart @ CPS Lab, McGill

Introduction of VSmart

VSmart is a DSRC-enabled smart vehicle testbed established at Cyber-Physical Systems Laboratory (CPS-Lab), McGill University, and is supported by NSERC and General Motors Company. VSmart explores and illustrates the potential to enhance driving safety and traffic efficiency with V2V communications (especially DSRC).

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(Figure source: U.S. DOT)

VSmart is among the first to apply Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) technologies. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, DSRC is "a two-way short- to- medium-range wireless communications capability that permits very high data transmission critical in communications-based active safety applications." The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has allocated 75 MHz of licensed spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band for DSRC. That's to say, DSRC is free from contention and collisions of all other communication technologies (e.g., 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, bluetooth, Zigbee and etc). In this way, DSRC is envisioned to provide more reliable and timely V2V communications than existing technologies.
VSmart employs a fleet of DSRC-enabled smart vehicles based on iRobot, USRP, laptops and tablets. With VSmart, we have shown the benefits and challenges of utilizing DSRC in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). To realize these benefits and tackle the challenges, we have designed and implemented our online control algorithms (e.g., OnCAR) on VSmart. Experiments demonstrate that OnCAR-enhanced DSRC greatly improves safety and reliability of critical vehicular applications including Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Lane Change Assist (LCA), and Autonomous Intersection Management (AIM).

Demos

We have made a series of demos, which are available on YouTube.
Episode 0 - Introduction;
Episode 1 - OnCAR-enhanced Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC);
Episode 2 - OnCAR-enhanced Lane Change Assist (LCA);
to be continued ...

Devices used in VSmart

VSmart is built on four iRobot Create, four USRP B210 radios, three laptops and two tablets.

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Publications

[1] Yuan Yao, Lei Rao, Xue Liu,"Performance and Reliability Analysis of IEEE 802.11p Safety Communication in a Highway Environment," in IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (TVT), Volume: 62, Issue: 9, pp. 4198-4212, 2013.
[2] Yuan Yao, Lei Rao, Xue Liu, Xingshe Zhou, "Delay Analysis and Study of IEEE 802.11 based DSRC Safety Communication in a Highway Environment," in Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE Conference on Computer Communications 2013 (INFOCOM 2013), pp. 1591-1599, Turin, Italy (Acceptance rate = 17%, 280 out of 1613).
[3] Xi Chen, Lei Rao, Yuan Yao, Xue Liu, Fan Bai,"The Answer is Rolling on Wheels: Modeling and Performance Evaluation of In-cabin Wi-Fi Communications," in Elsevier Journal of Vehicular Communications, Volume: 2, Issue: 1, pp. 13-26, 2015.

Personnel

Advisors: Prof. Xue Liu (@McGill University) and Dr. Lei Rao (@ General Motors Company).
Developers (@McGill University): Xi Chen, Xuepeng Xu, Dr. Linghe Kong and Dr. Qiao Xiang.

Acknowledgements

VSmart is supported by NSERC and General Motors Company. We would like to thank Dr. Joseph D'Ambrosio, Dr. Justin Gammage and Dr. Fan Bai for their valuable suggestions and support.