Experimental Demonstration of a Visible Light Communications Crosswalk Assistance System

In the context in which pedestrians are the most exposed road user category in urban areas, this paper presents the results of an experimental demonstration of a new system designed to assist pedestrians in safely using a crosswalk. The proposed architecture consists of a pedestrian detection and localization unit that detects pedestrians in the crosswalk area, a visible light communications component that transmits this information toward the approaching vehicles using the visible light communications technology and a graphical user interface that enables the driver to receive relevant traffic safety information. The experimental investigation has shown that based on a multi-sensor data fusion approach, pedestrians are detected with an overall 100% detection rate, whereas the low power crosswalk sign VLC emitter can provide a communication range of up to 27 ― 40 meters, with a data rate of 100 kb/s and a BER in the 10–
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― 10–
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range. Therefore, the experimental results indicate that the proposed VLC system has high performance in traffic situations that could pose serious issues to other concepts.