In-vehicle sensor data fusion for road friction monitoring

This study presents the in-vehicle road friction estimation module to provide information for the driver to adapt his/her driving style. Our main aim is to enable support for saving fuel, minimising ecological impact and improving traffic safety. The module is based on the IcOR camera system developed by VTT which has been combined with inertia unit. Moreover, GPS receiver has been implemented to provide geographical position of the vehicle which is important for the infrastructure side of cooperative traffic services. The test results indicate clear correlation with the lateral accelerations and IcOR road state measures. The most important outcome is the chance to reduce number of false alarms of the IcOR system with acceleration based measurement. Moreover, the benefit of the acceleration data is the possibility to maintain the detection reliability of IcOR system in level of 70 % when driving in dark environment such as tunnels or night time.