In this paper, we present the architecture of an innovative docking station for electric vehicles recharging and a hybrid control scheme for automatic docking of the vehicles. This work is a part of on-going project concerning the development of a smart charging station for electric vehicles equipped with an automated arm, which connect the vehicle to the charging station, and an infrared beacon system for localizing the automatically maneuvering vehicle in the docking area. The proposed control scheme combines time-optimal (bang-bang) control with continuous time-invariant nonlinear control, which stabilizes the vehicle to a small neighborhood of the docking point. Simulation and experimental results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

In this paper, we will present the design and the implementation of a new generation of maps specially designed for the ADAS-like applications. We will focus on the design of the map, the data structure and the choice of road attributes. We will present also the design of a software that enables our intelligent vehicle to perform as a mapping system for advanced attributes acquisition.

In this paper we present a system for three-dimensional environment modeling. It consists of an instrumented vehicle equipped with a 2D laser range scanner for data mapping, and GPS, INS and odometers for vehicle positioning and attitude information. The advantage of this system is its ability to perform data acquisition during the vehicle navigation; the sensor needed being a basic 2D scanner with opposition to traditional expensive 3D sensors. This system integrates the laser raw range data with the vehicle's internal state estimator and is capable of reconstructing the 3D geometry of the environment by real-time geo-referencing. We propose a high level representation of the urban scene while identifying automatically and in real time some types of existing objects in this environment. Thus, our modeling is articulated around three principal axes: the segmentation, decimation, the 3D reconstruction and visualization. The road is the most important object for us; some road features like the curvature and the width are extracted.