Implementation and Evaluation of a Cooperative Vehicle-to-Pedestrian Safety Application

While the development of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) safety applications based on Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) has been extensively undergoing standardization for more than a decade, such applications are extremely missing for Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs). Nonexistence of collaborative systems between VRUs and vehicles was the main reason for this lack of attention. Recent developments in Wi-Fi Direct and DSRC-enabled smartphones are changing this perspective. Leveraging the existing V2V platforms, we propose a new framework using a DSRC-enabled smartphone to extend safety benefits to VRUs. The interoperability of applications between vehicles and portable DSRC enabled devices is achieved through the SAE J2735 Personal Safety Message (PSM). However, considering the fact that VRU movement dynamics, response times, and crash scenarios are fundamentally different from vehicles, a specific framework should be designed for VRU safety applications to study their performance. In this article, we first propose an end-to-end Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) framework to provide situational awareness and hazard detection based on the most common and injury-prone crash scenarios. The details of our VRU safety module, including target classification and collision detection algorithms, are explained next. Furthermore, we propose and evaluate a mitigating solution for congestion and power consumption issues in such systems. Finally, the whole system is implemented and analyzed for realistic crash scenarios.