Congratulations to Samuel Ward, one of our third year Discrete Mathematics students, who has received a silver award as part of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists’ (WCIT) Charity University IT Awards 2021. The awards, which were first held in 2015, seek to recognize outstanding undergraduate and postgraduate IT students within the UK. Applicants are judged based on their academic excellence, ability to overcome adversity, entrepreneurial skills, and contribution to charity or community.

Physics is following all university guidance to ensure our activities can restart and continue to operate safely.

Staff and PhD students are reminded that they must not come to campus if they are displaying any symptoms of Covid-19.

Please read the guidance and complete the checklist before returning to campus.

The department of Chemistry expects to appoint around 60 funded and self-funded PhD and MSc students in the 2021/2022 academic year

New research by epidemiologist Dr Mike Tildesley and colleagues has found that there is no significant evidence that schools are playing a significant role in driving the spread of the Covid-19 disease in the community, particularly in primary schools. However, careful continued monitoring may be required as schools re-open to stay well informed about the effect they have upon community incidence.

Press Release (15 February 2021)

Application Deadline: 31st March 2021

High level autonomous vehicles (AVs) are promised by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and technology companies to improve road safety as well as bringing economical and societal benefits to us all.

All high-level AVs rely heavily on sensors, and in the paper, ‘Realistic LiDAR with Noise Model for Real-Tim Testing of Automated Vehicles in a Virtual Environment’, published in the IEEE Sensors Journal, researchers from the Intelligent Vehicles Group at WMG, University of Warwick have specifically simulated and evaluated the performance of LiDAR sensors in rain.

Using the WMG 3xD simulator, researchers tested an autonomous vehicle’s LiDAR sensors in different intensities of rain, driving around a simulation of real roads in and around Coventry. The simulator is a key part of testing autonomous vehicles, as they have to have been on several million miles of road, this therefore means that they can be tested in a safe environment that is the same as a real road.

LiDAR sensors work by emitting numerous narrow beams of near-infrared light with circular/elliptical cross sections, these can reflect off objects in their trajectories and return to the detector of the LiDAR sensor.

One of the issues of LiDAR sensors is the degradation of its performance in rain. If a LiDAR beam intersects with a raindrop at a short distance from the transmitter, the raindrop can reflect enough of the beam back to the receiver, therefore detecting the raindrop as an object. The droplets can also absorb some of the emitted light, degrading the range of performance for the sensors.

Using different probabilistic rain models (none, to different intensities) researchers made it ‘rain’ the WMG 3XD simulator, and measured the LiDAR sensor’s responses to the rain, making a record of false positive and false negative detections.

They found that as the rain intensity increased it became more difficult for the sensors to detect objects. In a short range from the vehicle (up to 50m), several rain drops were erroneously detected. However in a medium range, (50m-100m) this had decreased, but as rainfall increased to up to 50mm per hour, the sensors detection of objects decreased in conjunction with a longer range in distance.

Dr Valentina Donzella, from WMG, University of Warwick comments:
“Ultimately we have confirmed that the detection of objects is hindered to LiDAR sensors the heavier the rain and the further away they are, this means that future research will have to investigate how to ensure LiDAR sensors can still detect objects sufficiently in noisy environment.

“The developed real-time sensor and noise models will help to further investigate these aspects, and may also inform autonomous vehicles manufacturers’ design choices, as more than one type of sensor will be needed to ensure the vehicle can detect objects in heavy rain.”

ENDS

25 FEBRUARY 2021

NOTES TO EDITORS

High-res images available at:

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/february_2021/pic_1.jpg
Caption: The WMG 3xD simulator, used to test the LiDAR sensors
Credit: WMG, University of Warwick

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/february_2021/pic_2_.jpg
Caption: A virtual scan of the NAIC building generated with Intelligent Vehicle Group’s LiDAR model
Credit: WMG, University of Warwick

Paper available to view at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9354172

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Alice Scott
Media Relations Manager – Science
University of Warwick
Tel: +44 (0) 7920 531 221
E-mail: alice.j.scott@warwick.ac.uk

Congratulations to Kat Rock for winning the HATMEPP II Grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This $2.2m grant is for the modelling of Human African Trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness). Building on her earlier HATMEPP project, this grant will run from 2021 to 2024.

In a new study from Warwick Medical School, the effectiveness of three alternatives to CPR were examined, and it was concluded that none were beneficial. Lead author Dr Christopher Smith said: 'People need to continue doing the basics: if someone collapses you should call 999, start CPR, and if someone else is present they should find a defibrillator'.

Dr Liz Blagrove (Psychology)​

Born-again Psychologist and Jill of many trades, I'm now enjoying my ‘heyday’ as an emotion scientist. I research, teach and talk to anyone about my passion for cognition, emotion, facial processing, individual differences, positive psychology and executive functions. My first love in engagement activity is talking to children about human behaviour- particularly their emotions, similarities and differences. However, writing and presenting on all these topics- and the way they interact with our everyday lives - keeps me smiling... even on bad days!