There is a growing social interest in developing vision-based vehicle guidance systems for improving traffic safety and efficiency and the environment. Ex amples of vision-based vehicle guidance systems include collision warning systems, steering control systems for tracking painted lane marks, and speed control systems for preventing rear-end collisions. Like other guidance systems for aircraft and trains, these systems are ex pected to increase traffic safety significantly. For example, safety improve ments of aircraft landing processes after the introduction of automatic guidance systems have been reported to be 100 times better than prior to installment. Although the safety of human lives is beyond price, the cost for automatic guidance could be compensated by decreased insurance costs. It is becoming more important to increase traffic safety by decreasing the human driver's load in our society, especially with an increasing population of senior people who continue to drive. The second potential social benefit is the improvement of traffic efficiency by decreasing the spacing between vehicles without sacrificing safety. It is reported, for example, that four times the efficiency is expected if the spacing between cars is controlled automatically at 90 cm with a speed of 100 kmjh compared to today's typical manual driving. Although there are a lot of tech nical, psychological, and social issues to be solved before realizing the high density jhigh-speed traffic systems described here, highly efficient highways are becoming more important because of increasing traffic congestion.

This book surveys the history of automatic vehicle guidance based on the processing of visual information, starting from the very first projects worldwide up to the latest developments. It also presents the ARGO prototype vehicle, developed at the University of Parma (Italy), and describes its equipment, setup, and performance. ARGO has been equipped with cameras and processing systems to drive autonomously in real traffic conditions. The complete system has been tested on public roads, during a tour in which ARGO drove itself along the Italian highway network for more than 2000 km. A detailed analysis of this trip is also included.

This book surveys the history of automatic vehicle guidance based on the processing of visual information, starting from the very first projects worldwide up to the latest developments. It also presents the ARGO prototype vehicle, developed at the University of Parma (Italy), and describes its equipment, setup, and performance. ARGO has been equipped with cameras and processing systems to drive autonomously in real traffic conditions. The complete system has been tested on public roads, during a tour in which ARGO drove itself along the Italian highway network for more than 2000 km. A detailed analysis of this trip is also included.

The papers in this volume comprise the refereed proceedings of the the First International Conference on Computer and Computing Technologies in Ag- culture (CCTA 2007), in Wuyishan, China, 2007. This conference is organized by China Agricultural University, Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering and the Beijing Society for Information Technology in Agriculture. The purpose of this conference is to facilitate the communication and cooperation between institutions and researchers on theories, methods and implementation of computer science and information technology. By researching information technology development and the - sources integration in rural areas in China, an innovative and effective approach is expected to be explored to promote the technology application to the development of modern agriculture and contribute to the construction of new countryside. The rapid development of information technology has induced substantial changes and impact on the development of China’s rural areas. Western thoughts have exerted great impact on studies of Chinese information technology devel- ment and it helps more Chinese and western scholars to expand their studies in this academic and application area. Thus, this conference, with works by many prominent scholars, has covered computer science and technology and information development in China’s rural areas; and probed into all the important issues and the newest research topics, such as Agricultural Decision Support System and Expert System, GIS, GPS, RS and Precision Farming, CT applications in Rural Area, Agricultural System Simulation, Evolutionary Computing, etc.