No abstract

The steady enhancement of driver assistance systems and the automation of driving functions are in need of advanced driver monitoring functionalities. To evaluate the driver state, several parameters must be acquired. A basic parameter is the position of the driver, which can be useful for comfort automation or medical applications. Acquiring the position through cameras can be used to provide multiple information at once. When using infrared cameras, not only the position information but also the thermal information is available. Head tracking in the infrared domain is still a challenging task. The low resolution of affordable sensors makes it especially difficult to achieve high robustness due the lack of detailed images. In this paper, we present a novel approach for robust head tracking based on template matching and optical flow. The method has been tested on various sets of subjects containing different head shapes. The evaluation does not only include the original sensor size, but also downscaled images to simulate low resolution sensors. A comparison with the ground truth is performed for X- and Y-coordinate separately for each downscaled resolution.

We examine the economic viability of second-life batteries from electric vehicles for load shifting and peak shaving in residential applications. We further investigate the expected impact of a growing number of residential storage systems on the electricity market. For the analysis a simulation model of a private household with integrated PV-storage system is used that is parametrized for an electricity demand of three people and a location in southern Germany. The conditions for which investments in second use batteries are profitable are examined for three scenarios. The central scenario S2 tackles an expected net increase in the electricity price by 4% per year. Upward and downward deviations from this price trajectory are covered by scenarios S1 and S3. For scenario S1, we find that investments in storage systems are profitable for all Li-ion battery costs assumed. In scenario S2, the breakeven battery price is found to be 107 € kWh-1 , whereas in scenario S3 with the lowest electricity price growth the battery price has to be equal or lower than 73 € kWh-1 to maintain economic viability.

No abstract