CAPC: A Road-Departure Prevention System

The Crewman's Associate for Path Control (CAPC) is an automatic road-departure warning system for motor vehicle drivers. This article presents the design of, and preliminary field results from, the CAPC prototype vehicle, a modified 1995 Ford Taurus SHO. The CAPC system is intended for highway drivers who are drifting off the roadway at a shallow angle of departure due to inattention, drowsiness, intoxication, or other causes. A camera senses the roadway ahead, and a suite of transducers provide measurements of vehicle motion and driver steering commands. These are used to anticipate unintended road departures and warn the driver. Warning and intervention functions for CAPC have been developed during ongoing research at the University of Michigan; the algorithms are reviewed here in the context of the prototype. The prototype hardware and software are described in detail, and preliminary experimental data from the field is presented.