2014 IEEE International Conference on Vehicular Electronics and Safety (ICVES)
December 16-17, 2014. Hyderabad, India
The Intelligent Overtaking Model for Reducing Road
Accidents Based on Animal Group Behavior
Mounica.U, Spandana.V, Praveen Mande, Swathi Mugada,Uttam.M, Member, IEEE
Abstract— Human lives are being greatly menaced by road
accidents. Accidents due to overtaking pose an even greater
threat. Disciplined behavioral mechanisms of animal groups
have promoted development in various technological fields
including crowd simulation. On this basis, the proposed
work develops Overtaking Possibility Check Algorithm
(OPC) and the Overtaking Algorithm (OT) which operates
on the front and the rear vehicles respectively. The
algorithms provide a new mechanism for avoiding accidents
due to overtaking by mutual communication between them.
The various components of the proposed system work in
collaboration to indicate the possibilities to overtake with
detailed review of the recommended speed, trajectories. In
other scenarios where immediate overtaking is not possible a
suggested deceleration of the front vehicle is recommended.
It is ensured that the safe distances are maintained
throughout the process thus avoiding tailgating as well. The
safe range space around the vehicle is considered to be
delimited by an ellipse shaped boundary. The algorithm
refrains to allow overtaking if the safe distances cannot be
maintained i.e. if there is a significant amount of overlap
between the ellipse regions of the vehicles. After the
simulation of the above model it is inferred that algorithm’s
dynamic implementation in real time scenario could
potentially reduce the number of accidents occurring due to
overtaking.
Keywords–Overtaking Algorithm, Safe Distance, Vehicle
Mutual Communication, Accidents
I. INTRODUCTION
Road accidents are considered to be the biggest
killers of human lives in the present day traffic scenario.
Their menace has a more prominent impact on the
developing countries where this “epidemic” has in turn
proved to be the source of other important global issues
like human suffering, poverty and economic instabilities.
The statistics concerning accidents are rather alarming. As
a matter of fact India leads the rest of the world when it
comes to the number of accidents occurred per year.
According to the Ministry of road transport and Highways
the number has crossed the 135000 mark which brings us
down to a chilling average of 15 accidents per hour. These
numbers however do not give us the exact picture as
many accidents actually go unrecorded. Needless to say,
safe and viable road transport has become the greatest
development challenge. Man has always tried to skillfully
confront this challenge. Abundant research is being done
to achieve road safety and sustainability but the pinnacle
remains unconquered.
Man always tries to ape the mystical laws of nature in
his scientific formulations. Several species of wildlife
move about in groups be it a swarm of bees or a school of
fish. Every flock has one emergent behavior that arises
978-1-4799-1882-9/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
from an individual following a set of rules and not
through a central coordination. C.W.Reynolds proposed
the bird-oid (BOID) theory wherein three simple rules
that govern flocking behavior were focused upon:
alignment, separation and cohesion [1]. Each agent in the
flock makes a decision regarding its next step by
considering the state of its neighboring agents and its own
current state. That work also explored an approach to
simulation rather than tracing the path of each bird
individually. Each bird was considered an individual
actor that navigated according to its own perception in the
dynamic environment. This idea led to the advancement
in the study of animal group behavior and its applications
in solving the issues of mankind. Several models have
been generated that mimic natural groups. The Particle
Swarm Optimization (PSO) by Kennedy in 1995 [3], [4],
essentially reviewed the relationship between particle
swarm optimization and artificial life with evolutionary
computation. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) was
proposed by Marco Dorigo [5], [6] in 1999 was centered
around the behavior of ants while searching for food. The
algorithms were formulated in a common frame work and
were applied to bring out solutions to difficult
optimization problems. Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm
(ABC) [7] focused on two fundamental behavioral
concepts of the honey bees which are self organization
and division of labor. These were applied to obtain swarm
intelligent behavior. Crowd simulation techniques have
frequently been used to animate groups in various
applications [22], [23]. Nicolus Corty in 2007 presented
a new technique for animation of a crowd of human
beings [13]. S.Ali and K.Nishino have also provided a
comprehensive map for better analyzing pedestrian
movements in thick heterogeneous crowds [14].
Several other algorithms such as the Bacterial
Foraging Optimization (BFO) [8], Artificial Fish School
Algorithm (AFSA) [9], [10], Glowworm Swarm
Optimization (GSO) [11], as well as Bacterial Chemotaxis
Algorithm (BC)[12] are aimed at simulating colonies and
analyze the behavior control of the groups to address
practical engineering problems. Duan and Gu in 2014 [2]
proposed the Evasion Mechanism Artificial Fish School
Algorithm (EM-AFSA) wherein a new mechanism called
evasion was coined and a new colony of zoo planktons
was simulated. This mechanism helped agents avoid static
obstacles, tailgating, predators, flocking, mutual collision
and foraging. The mechanism thus improved the swarm
intelligence algorithm by introducing evasion to model
animal group behavior. On the basis of previous research,
this paper makes an effort to further analyze and deal with
situations like evading dynamic obstacles on the road by
considering certain decisive factors that include relative
speeds of the vehicles, the time constraints, surrounding
conditions at that particular time and the minimum safe
distance required to be maintained by vehicles to avoid
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tailgating [21].
Great scientists have invariably believed in
discovering wisdom in nature. Zooplanktons, the tiny
animal constituents of the plankton kingdom have a habit
of flocking together in a colony. They forage and
collectively move to areas with high densities of food
avoiding obstacles, crowding and tailgating in this process
by maintaining the best condition safe distance while
approaching their neighbors. Figure 1 shows a school of
fish swimming successfully by avoiding collisions. This
nature of zooplanktons could be forged to avoid road
accidents. In this paper the behavior of zooplanktons is
mapped to that of traffic on road in which safe distances
are given high priority. Most accidents occur when one
vehicle is being followed too closely by the other vehicle.
Fig.1. School of fishes
The risk is that reaction time to emergency situations
reduces to 1.5 to 3 seconds which means even the best of
the drivers may be found guilty to tailgate [19], [20].
Most people fail to indicate for long before they
maneuver. They also fail to look out properly before they
pull over, resulting in accidents. In this work an intelligent
model for overtaking is proposed in which two novel
algorithms the OPC (Overtaking Possibility Check)
algorithm and the OT (Overtaking) algorithm have been
developed to conquer the road accident occurring due to
rash overtaking.
II. IOM-INTELLIGENT OVERTAKING MODEL
The following are the three basic properties that act as
guidelines to model animal group behavior and can be
applied to such animation models [15], [16], [17].
Behavior property:
The agents must act in a way such that the priority to
avoid life threatening danger is considered far more
superior in comparison to the other activities.
Opportunities:
The agent should be able to interrupt the current
activity for the execution of a superior act.
Instantaneous reaction:
The agent must be able to react instantaneously to
various stimuli.
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Figure 2 represents the block diagram of IOM. The
rear vehicle’s overtake expert system (RR_VHCL) is
designed to take in interrupt INTR from the user
signifying the user’s willingness to overtake. The INTR is
efficiently handled by two modules namely RVIS (Rear
Vehicle Interrupt Sender) and RVC (Rear Vehicle
Controller) that are intrinsic components within
RR_VHCL. The RVIS essentially serves as the interface
between the user and the RVC. It effectively
communicates all the interrupts between the user and
RVC. The RVC is the core processing unit within the
RR_VHCL. It is a channel between the RR_VHCL and
the front vehicle’s expert system (FNT_VHCL). The
inputs and interrupts from user are directed inherently to
the RVC by the RVIS. The RVC is responsible to extract
appropriate data from them and forward it to suitable
components within the FNT_VHCL system. On the other
hand the INTR when received by the FCL (Front vehicle
Control Limits) module of FNT_VHCL system,
consequently invokes internal calls to the PA (Position
Analyzer) and GVPS (Geo-Vehicle Positioning System).
The PA and the GVPS are also the components of
FNT_VHCL. The GVPS is responsible in providing the
IOM with the position co-ordinates of all the obstacles
within the perception range Vrange. This information is
directed to the PA, which analyses it to derive the distance
and the angle between the obstacle and the front vehicle.
The FCL thoroughly studies these essential details
received from the PA and GVPS. Based on these FCL
reasons out the possibilities to overtake, the trajectory of
overtake and the recommended speed and time limits to
be maintained during the same. It then forwards all of this
reasoned data to the RVC module of rear vehicle. Thus,
informing the user about the possibilities to overtake. In
all the technologies currently available, ZigBee
technology is appropriate for sending and receiving R_I,
OT_EXEC and OT_ACK signals and thus enabling
effective and uninterrupted communication between
FNT_VHCL and RR_VHCL [18].
Fig.2. Block Diagram of IOM
The road is assumed to be a virtual 2- Dimensional
space Vr with N vehicles travelling on it. The position of
each individual vehicle is Pi(t) = (p1,p2), where p1 and p2
are its vertical and horizontal coordinate positions. Every
vehicle is characterized with a safe range space Si. Safe
range space is the imaginary leeway territory around the
vehicle delimited by an ellipse shaped boundary. Si
boundary is ellipse shaped for effective road utilization.
Figure 3 is a schematic representation of safe range
spaces. Considering the different sizes of vehicles with
varying capacities and spread, they have been broadly
classified into 4 general categories based on the above
parameters. The safe range values are calculated
accordingly and are constant for that particular category
of vehicles. Communication is enabled between the
vehicles so that there is mutual exchange of speeds,
elapsed time, safe ranges and other essential parameters
between the OPC and OT. In the OT, grades can be
replaced by the actual physical dimensions of the vehicle
when passed as parameters to OPC. This can be done if
simulation is required to be less generic.
TABLE I. Size based general categorization of vehicles
CATEGORY SAFE
RANGE
CONSTAN
TS
2 WHEELERS R1
3 WHEELERS R2
DOMESTIC 4 WHEELERS R3
HEAVY COMMERCIAL R4
4 WHEELER VEHICLES
If the rear vehicle enters the safe range space Si of the
vehicle in front during maneuver then the rear vehicle is
advised to refrain from the subsequent overtaking.
Fig.3. Ellipse Shaped Safe Range Space
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A. RR_VHCL Overtaking (OT)
Start
Step 1: Define INTR=0
Step 2: RVIS listens for INTR from RR_VHCL
Step3: If (INTR==1)
then
send R_I(vh_vel, Grade)
RVC checks for RESP_FLAG
If (RESP_FLAG==1)
then
get TRJ_CODE, SS, TL
values and send to RVIS
Else
set RESP_FLAG=0
and send to RVIS
GOTO step 2
Else
GOTO step 2
Step 4: If RR_VHCL ready to overtake
then
send OT_EXEC to FNT_VHCL
Stop
Fig.4. Algorithm for RR_VHCL Overtaking
The system is ignited by the rear vehicle’s
request for overtaking, as shown in the algorithm depicted
in the Fig 4. Initially INTR is defined to be zero. When
the user is interested in overtaking INTR is sent to RVIS
(Rear Vehicle Interrupt Sender). The RVIS listens for the
interrupt sets the value of the interrupt signal. If the truth
value of the interrupt signal is positive then the FCL
procedure in FF_VHCL is invoked to which the vehicle’s
current speed and its categorized grade are sent as
parameters. Once the interrupt is sent to OPC in
FNT_VHCL, the RVC waits for its response. The FCL
response is the RES_FLAG signal. The RES_FLAG
signal determines if the process of overtaking is possible.
The RVC analyses the RES_ FLAG. If its truth value is
positive the values SS and TL are sent to RVIS, else the
user is informed that there are no current possibilities to
overtake. In this case he waits for a random time and
sends a new request. SS and TL are the values that denote
the speed to be maintained by the rear vehicle during
overtake and the time range (TL) within which overtake
must take place. If the user makes a final decision to
overtake then OT_EXEC interrupt is set to 1 and sent to
the OPC making the front vehicle alert.
 B. FNT _VHCL Overtaking Possibility Check (OPC) D_RESP which based on it its truth value either invokes
REAR_WAIT or sends back reply RES_FLAG to the OT
Start in RR_VHCL. After repetition of the above process for all
OBS in O_L the RES_FLAG is set. If there is a
Step 1: Listen for R_I
possibility to overtake, other parameters which include
Step 2: If (R_I == 1) the trajectory of overtake (TRJ_CODE), the
then recommended speed of RR_VHCL during overtakes (SS)
and the time limit (TL) are reasoned and communicated to
ODS locates OB within V where
the OT. During the entire process of overtaking it is
{OB|(OB_AXIS && |OB_AXIS|) Vrange} thoroughly examined that the safe range space of the
Store data in O_L and O_T accordingly
vehicles do not intercept beyond certain threshold using
fuzzy logic. After the RES_FLAG is sent to RVIS the
Step 3: For each OB in O_L timer is set and the OT_EXEC interrupt is expected
Evaluate Pi(t) = (p1,p2) where i in O_L before the timer expires. OT_EXEC signifies an alert to
If !(O_D > S_D) the vehicle in front that the RR_VHCL is overtaking at
then the moment. On listening to the signal OT_ACK is sent
call DCLRT back to RVIS indicating the preparedness of FNT_VHCL.
If !(DCLRT_RESP)
then In case the FNT_VHCL receives R_I from more
execute than one rear vehicle then the nearest RR_VHCL’s R_I
WAIT_REAR signal would be prioritized and its possibility to overtake
GOTO Step 1 the front vehicle would be calculated. The other aspirant
Else rear vehicles would be sent the REAR_WAIT signal. If
GOTO Step 3 two equally distant rear vehicles wait to overtake the front
vehicle then the R_I’s would be prioritized on the first
Step 4: Send RESP_FLAG, TRJ_CODE, SS, TL to come first serve basis.
RVC and start timer
III. IMPLEMENTATION
Step 5: If (SYS_TIME<TIMER) The developed algorithm uses imprecise data
then while calculating the safe distance and estimating the
listen for OT_EXEC overlap of the safe range space Si during overtake. Here
If (OT_EXEC==1) the concepts of fuzzy systems are used to calculate the
safe distance dynamically while overtaking. Humans
then always overlap safe range spaces without taking
send ACK_OT precautionary measures resulting in accidents. The
Else algorithm is simulated using the JAVA programming
GOTO Step 5 language and is tested on different scenarios, optimally
Else decrease the number of accidents. The data of the traffic
GOTO Step1 on road is recorded and from it the scenarios are
Stop extracted. Figure 6 depicts the interface through which
the input is taken. By using the algorithm the overtaking
is done by the rear vehicle by communicating with the
Fig.5. Algorithm for FNT_VHCL Overtaking Possibility Check front vehicle to overtake.
When the rear vehicle sends the request, the front
vehicle starts a procedure OPC to check the possibility of
overtaking and responds to rear as shown in the Figure 5.
The FCL is continually in the process of listening to the
signal expected from the OT algorithm in RR_VHCL. On
sensing R_I the Obstacle Detection System (ODS) in
FNT_VHCL locates all the obstacles whose distances
(O_D) and angle from the FNT_VHCL are well within
Vrange. The obstacles satisfying the above criteria are
carefully shortlisted (O_L) and their corresponding data is
stored in O_T. The position co-ordinates are calculated
for each OBS in O_L. If the O_D is less than the S_D
then a DCLRT procedure is called. In such a case there is
tailgating and overtaking is not considered to be safe. But
the O_D could certainly be increased if there is a Fig.6. IOM Obstacle Feed Interface.
possibility of front vehicle deceleration. The DCLRT
checks for such possibilities. Considering the present Figure 7 and figure 8 illustrates the rear and front vehicle
traffic situation the DCLRT generates a response interfaces respectively.

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Fig.7. IOM Request Processing Interface
The front vehicle algorithm calculates the
possibilities. Here in the simulated system the data
regarding the obstacles for the front vehicle is given. This
data is extracted from a real time video of the traffic. The
simulated program will take necessary decisions and
acknowledge the rear program. The result shows that
though the time taken for this process is greater in
comparison to the conventional process it is successful in
decreasing the number of road accidents.
Fig.8. IOM Response Interface
IV. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
After the simulation the proposed model was
thus represented graphically. Figure 9 depicts the
comparison between real time traffic scenarios and
simulated IOM. The comparison is based on the average
time taken for overtaking and the number of accidents that
have occurred. The time is found to have increased while
the number of accident cases has decreased on using
simulated IOM.
Fig.9. IOM Response Interface
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V. CONCLUSION
This paper aims at reducing road accidents
caused due to overtaking by implementing the IOM. OT
runs in the rear vehicle and enables it to send interrupts to
the front vehicle for checking the overtaking possibilities
and also alerting the front vehicle just before overtaking.
The OPC executing in the front vehicle takes in these
inputs analyses them based on factors such as the grade of
the rear vehicle, its speed and the traffic condition within
perception range and indicates the rear vehicle if there
happens to be a possibility to overtake and if yes the
recommended speed and time. The front vehicle remains
alert on subsequently receiving the overtake execution
signal as well.
The proposed model was developed to reduce
road accidents due to overtaking, in the future work this
purpose could further be strengthened by further
enhancing the proposed model to produce a quicker real
time response. The model could further be improved by
taking side roads also into consideration.
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