We are all pedestrians at some point in our daily lives. Whether it is walking to work or strolling through a park, pedestrian safety should be a vital concern. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 7,388 pedestrians were killed and more than 60,000 were injured in 2021. As automated vehicle technology proliferates, the safety of all road users must be at the forefront.

This talk, led by Professor Sridhar Lakshmanan, will focus on a variety of enabling technologies for vehicle-pedestrian interactions such as Automated Pedestrian Proxies, Prediction of Vehicle Conflicts, and Use of Projection Light to Increase Pedestrian Safety. In particular, Professor Lakshmanan will highlight his xBOT platform which behaves and is perceived as a free-moving pedestrian, scooter, bicycle, motorbike, or full-sized vehicle to test the safety performance of AV systems.
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About the speaker: Sridhar Lakshmanan is an Educator, Researcher, Mentor and Entrepreneur. He is on the faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Michigan – Dearborn. His expertise lies in intelligent systems: autonomous-connected vehicles, robots, intelligent transportation systems, and smart cities. He was won many awards for his work at the University. His publications on automotive radar won the 2001 Best Paper Award from the IEEE Vehicular Electronics Society, on semi-truck platooning won the 2019 GVSETS Conference Best Paper Award from NDIA, and on lightweight transport robot the 2021 GVSETS Conference Best Paper Award from NDIA. He has served as a Project Director and Principal Investigator on a number of grants and contracts from various U.S. Government agencies: Defense, Transportation, Energy, and NSF; Defense Contractors: SAIC and General Dynamics; and Commercial Automotive Companies: Ford, GM, Delphi/Aptiv, ZF, Hella, Osram, and GAA. Sridhar has been a mentor and advisor to more than ten startups. Finally, Sridhar’s estimates on transmission and distribution assets have been used in the City of Detroit’s historic bankruptcy filings in federal courts, and he has been instrumental in the system-wide LED replacements of the City of Detroit’s and City of Memphis’ streetlights. Sridhar got his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst in 1991.