University of Minho

About: University of Minho is a education organization based out in Braga, Portugal. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Population. The organization has 10585 authors who have published 34736 publications receiving 732436 citations. The organization is also known as: Universidade do Minho & UMinho.

The interaction between driving and in-vehicle information systems: comparison of results from laboratory, simulator and real-world studies

Abstract: The main objective of this study was to compare a standardized visual performance test in three driving research environments: laboratory, simulator and instrumented vehicle. The effects of the standardized secondary visual search task on the primary task, i.e., aspects of driving performance, were evaluated and compared between the three facilities. One main purpose of the EU project HASTE, which was the context of the present study, is to produce guidelines for and assess the suitability of each of the test environments for testing the effects of in-vehicle information systems on driving performance. Results showed that for gross effects on performance indicators, aspects of lateral position control in the laboratory test gave a sufficient first indication of sizeable influence as soon as visual attention was diverted towards the secondary task. More subtle differences between levels of visual search difficulty were only found in the simulator and in the field. Keywords: Driver distraction;

Target Representation on an Autonomous Vehicle with Low-Level Sensors

Abstract: How can low-level autonomous robots with only very simple sensor systems be endowed with cognitive capabilities? Specifically, we consider a system that uses seven infrared sensors and five microphones to avoid obstacles and acquire sound targets. The cognitive abilities of the vehicle consist of representing the direction in which a sound source lies. This representation supports target detection, estimation of target direction, selection of one out of multiple-detected targets, storage of target direction in short-term memory, continuous updating of memory, and deletion of memorized target information after a characteristic delay. We show that the dynamic approach (attractor dynamics) employed to control the motion of the robot can be extended to the level of representation by using dynamic neural fields to interpolate sensory information. We show how the system stabilizes decisions in the presence of multivalue sensorial information and activates and deactivates memory. Smooth integration of this targe...