Navigation is a human activity with the aim being to arrive at a predetermined destination. In order to find the way to the destination, the use of current input from the actual environment while travelling is needed as well as stored and organized knowledge of the local geography. Although the knowledge requirement has been studied extensively in the form of cognitive maps or other spatial representation, few studies deal with how the knowledge is used together with the input from the actual environment while navigating.

Autonomous Intelligent Cruise Control (AICC) will be marketed by a number of vehicle manufacturers before the end of the decade. This paper will describe AICC and the next generation systems currently being developed and validated within the EC Fourth Framework project, Anti-Collision Autonomous Support and Safety Intervention SysTem (AC ASSIST).

The currently available cruise control systems which maintain a fixed speed are a well-known form of longitudinal driver support. The fixed speed cruise control becomes less useful with increased traffic volumes, as the driver must disable the system when a slower preceding vehicle is encountered.

In a paper in 1988 it was confidently predicted that there would be a commercial dynamic route guidance system operating in London by about 1992. When in 1993 a review was conducted of why the optimism of the late 1980s had not been played out in reality, there were four main reasons given for the delays:

(i) Availability of mapping data.

(ii) Establishment of good traffic monitoring networks.

(iii) Choice of communication method.

(iv) Need for integration with other Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) services.

Road transport plays a vital part in the UK economy and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. However, the environmental issues surrounding transport are also of growing concern to the nation, with roads seen as a key element in the environmental debate. These two issues are in conflict, with one pointing to the need for greater road capacity to accommodate more vehicles while the other suggests a limit on road space and fewer vehicles. The Highways Agency has a responsibility to help resolve this dilemma and is doing so by placing increased emphasis on making more efficient use of existing roads.

ROMANSE — Road Management System for Europe — is multi-million pound pilot project based in Southampton. It aims to use Advanced Transport Telematics (ATT) to develop the city as a model for transport management systems across Europe. ROMANSE achieves this by providing realtime traffic and travel information to influence travel behaviour, increase the use of public transport, maximize the efficiency of the transport system and provide high-quality information for use in strategic policy decisions.

This paper and the following paper were presented at a meeting organized by the Institute's Land Navigation Group in October 1995. The meeting was on Loction Technology Applications in Public Transport. Copies of the proceedings can be obtained from the Director (£10 to Members, £15 to Non-Members).

This short paper discusses briefly the role of the current forms of bus priority used in the United Kingdom and how these strategies are incorporated within our urban traffic control systems.

The philosophy behind the SCOOT (Split, Cycle and Offset Optimization Technique) demand-responsive signal timings program is discussed, and the latest results from the bus priority trials carried out in London by the University of Southampton and London's Traffic Control Systems Unit (TCSU) are appraised. The system installed in London is compared with current dead reckoning vehicle location systems and the major differences highlighted.

Surveys reveal that walking is by far the most popular leisure activity in the UK, and still growing. Each year some half a billion ‘leisure day visits’ specifically involve walking in the countryside and over 60 percent of the adult population claim to participate in walking as a ‘sport’. These statistics serve to confirm our own experience that enormous numbers of walkers go out to enjoy the countryside, but when we say ‘walker’ we include Sunday afternoon strollers in Windsor Great Park, a rambling group following the coastal path in Dorset, strong fit youths doing the Pennine Way, or Munro baggers in the Scottish highlands. Walkers come in many a hue.

Farmers are having to gather increasing amounts of data on their soils and crops. Precision agriculture – the targeting of inputs such as fertilizers and herbicides according to locally determined (‘metre-by-metre’) requirements – is based on a knowledge of the spatial variation of soil and crop parameters across a field. The data has to be spatially located and GPS is an effective way of doing this. A backpack data logging system with GPS position tagging is described which has been designed to aid a fanner in the manual collection of data.

Since a paper on Datatrak was presented at Warwick to the NAV90 conference, the system has improved markedly. Each of its three major components has been further developed, giving increased functionality and reliability while allowing the service to be provided at a reduced cost.

Unlike in the case of airborne and offshore applications, GPS cannot be used continuously for land vehicle navigation due to the loss of satellite signals by obstructions from buildings, trees, etc. With the increasing trend in various sectors of the economy towards efficient fleet management, the challenges of providing a system capable of providing high-accuracy vehicle position and location anywhere, continuously, has led to renewed interest in the area of integrated navigation systems. In order to satisfy these conditions, an integrated system comprising GPS and gyro/odometer dead reckoning has been developed. This paper gives a description of the implemented system and shows some of the practical results that can be obtained using Kalman filtering algorithms.

For farming in the future, positional information is of particular importance. Out of a multitude of positioning systems, GPS/DGPS is the most suitable one. This system does not require any additional infrastructure and at the same time guarantees complete coverage of all tilled surfaces. The major application of positioning with GPS/DGPS is to be seen in the area of local information and documentation. By generating both planning and process data, it facilitates the operation and control of work processes (organic and mineral fertilization, plant protection). In the end, positioning leads to navigation, which, in the case of single vehicles and vehicle pools, will in turn provide completely new possibilities for development and application. For the first time, vehicles without drivers are conceivable. Thus, the completion of any kind of work on schedule, without time limitations, would become possible with the least possible stress for soil and environment.

A dual channel microwave Doppler-Sensor-Module for 24 GHz is presented. This front end is well suited for true ground speed and distance measurements in all kinds of automotive applications. The microwave components such as oscillator, mixer, antenna and their characteristics in the MIC are discussed. The influence of the antenna pattern and the road surface on the Doppler spectrum is treated in a 3D-field theoretical simulation. This simulation takes the antenna nearfield and the distributed scattering of the road into account.

Agriculture in the U.K. has, since the late 1940s, enjoyed government subsidy and insulation from free market forces. However, the post-war philosophy of ‘every acre counts’ no longer holds true in the face of surplus production and a growing public awareness of the countryside and environmental issues. Legislation relating to water pollution, public rights of way and price support mechanisms are all contributory factors to the radical changes which agriculture is undergoing at the present time. Investigations have shown a need within agriculture for the efficient use and handling of data relating to the land, and a need for new technology to exploit the inherent spatial variability of, for example, the soil. This paper will discuss the development of an agricultural vehicle positioning instrument and future research which will address the needs which have been identified.

A navigation strategy for an autonomous land vehicle (ALV) based on the Defence Geographic Database is currently being developed under the auspices of. the Mobile Advanced Robotics Defence Initiative (MARDI). The database is hierarchically structured, and supports the storage of an unlimited number of attributes for each geographical feature. It also expressly identifies the interconnectivity of adjacent features, making it ideal for automatic route calculation. Tactical battlefield information is being combined with the database resulting in a composite link-node map which will be searched for optimum routes using standard algorithms. Both military and geographical criteria will be simultaneously optimized. Waypoints suitable for machine vision techniques will also be extracted and used to confirm the ALV location.