Cooperative Tracking of Cyclists Based on Smart Devices and Infrastructure

In our work, we envision a future mixed traffic scenario [1] where traffic participants, such as automated driving cars, trucks, and intelligent infrastructure equipped with sensors, electronic maps, and Internet connection, share the road with vulnerable road users (VRUs), such as pedestrians and cyclists, equipped with smart devices. Each of them itself determines and continuously maintains a local model of the surrounding traffic situation. This model does not only contain information by each traffic participant's own sensory perception, but is the result of cooperation with other traffic participants and infrastructure in the local environment, e.g., based on vehicular ad hoc networks. This joint knowledge is exploited in various ways, e.g., to increase the perceptual horizon of individual road users beyond their own sensory capabilities. Although modern vehicles possess many forward looking safety systems based on various sensors, still dangerous situations for VRUs can occur as a result of occlusions or sensor malfunctions. Cooperation between the different road users can resolve occlusion situations and improve the overall performance regarding measurement accuracy, e.g., precise positioning.