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The Infra driver nudge steps towards the real world

A major advantage of the Infra driver nudge is that the dynamic light system can be activated based on intelligent detection, to nudge exactly the drivers who need to be nudged. But this also makes it more complex, and the different underlying systems have now been put together for the first time.

To activate the dynamic lights of the driver nudge, several stages of algorithms have to be passed. ISAC developed a software to detect cars from a camera and trace how they are moving along the curve. Heijmans on the other hand made a software to assess which drivers should be nudged and then communicate this to the actual lights on the road.

Except for manually importing dummy data files that resemble the actual output, these systems have never been tried together before. This was of course something that had to be done.

So a rig was set up at the ika test track in Aachen from where the developers of Heijmans and ISAC got out to the road. It was about to get exciting. Would the camera output be processed correctly in real-time, and could the software track multiple vehicles without interrupting? Luckily, after some expected debugging, it all passed with flying colours.

Now, the work will be focussed on what the driver actually sees when encountering the nudge. It is especially important to program the system so that drivers are nudged at the very right point in time. And then, the doors wide open for the system to work in the real world.