Full Text Available

Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.

Navigating the Future Advancing Autonomous Vehicles through Robust Target Recognition and Real-Time Avoidance

The problem being tackled by this thesis is a very important one and very relevant to our days and times: it is about making improved target recognition and enhanced real-time response skills in AVs under simulated conditions. Our plan is to put some enhanced sensory capabilities into these vehicles...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hussein, Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed
Format: Thesis
Published: AUC Knowledge Fountain 2025
Subjects:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1867613424330997760
access_status_str Open Access
author Hussein, Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed
author_browse Hussein, Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed
author_facet Hussein, Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed
author_sort Hussein, Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed
collection Thesis
description The problem being tackled by this thesis is a very important one and very relevant to our days and times: it is about making improved target recognition and enhanced real-time response skills in AVs under simulated conditions. Our plan is to put some enhanced sensory capabilities into these vehicles and see if that makes them safer and more reliable. We are using as our base a particular object recognition algorithm (YOLOv7) and a particular simulation environment (CARLA). We utilized the CARLA 0.9.14 simulator on Ubuntu 20.04 as a more stable option than the initially used CARLA 0.9.15 on Ubuntu 22.04, where both were used in an unreal engin 4.26 environment. This research work drew upon the CARLA simulator and used stereo cameras and LIDAR to create a robust simulated environment for the collection of times of the day, weather conditions, and urban and rural scenarios across different town layouts. An annotation effort by us resulted in the labeling of a more focused dataset of 4,113 images from a broader set of 160,000 generated through sensor fusion,stereo camera and LIDAR overlayed model. The object detection algorithm used in this work was YOLOv7. The nuance of this work comes from the testing of enhancements made in this new model over previous models of YOLO. Comparisons were also made to some other recent methods for object detection in autonomous vehicle applications. The main object classes of interest were cars, pedestrians, and cyclists, because these are the most dangerous classes with which an Autonomous Vehicles might have a collision. Detection capacity for the YOLOv7 model dramatically improved over previous iterations, from 100 epochs to 700 epochs. At an intersection over union (IoU) threshold of 0.5, YOLOv7 achieved a mean average precision (mAP) of 76.3%, which is better than its predecessors with an increase of 12%. YOLOv7's performance also varied depending on the target class, with cars being the most accurately detected object class, showing a precision of 0.841, a recall of 0.843, and mAP values at the 0.5 and 0.5:0.95 thresholds of 0.835 and 0.590, respectively. In real-world applications, YOLOv7 should yield impressive results for detecting and tracking a wide variety of object classes across many different environments. While the thesis robustly validates the performance improvements of Autonomous Vehicles systems within simulated settings, future work should focus on the physical implementation of these technologies in actual vehicles and testing in real-world scenarios. In Addition, further research should explore integrating real-time object avoidance capabilities to enhance the practical applicability and safety of autonomous vehicles in dynamic and unpredictable environments.
format Thesis
id oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-3466
institution American University in Cairo (Egypt)
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:35:55.364Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from AUC Knowledge Fountain — bepress
publishDate 2025
publishDateRange 2025
publishDateSort 2025
publisher AUC Knowledge Fountain
publisherStr AUC Knowledge Fountain
record_format dspace
source_str AUC Knowledge Fountain — bepress
spelling oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-3466 Navigating the Future Advancing Autonomous Vehicles through Robust Target Recognition and Real-Time Avoidance Hussein, Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed The problem being tackled by this thesis is a very important one and very relevant to our days and times: it is about making improved target recognition and enhanced real-time response skills in AVs under simulated conditions. Our plan is to put some enhanced sensory capabilities into these vehicles and see if that makes them safer and more reliable. We are using as our base a particular object recognition algorithm (YOLOv7) and a particular simulation environment (CARLA). We utilized the CARLA 0.9.14 simulator on Ubuntu 20.04 as a more stable option than the initially used CARLA 0.9.15 on Ubuntu 22.04, where both were used in an unreal engin 4.26 environment. This research work drew upon the CARLA simulator and used stereo cameras and LIDAR to create a robust simulated environment for the collection of times of the day, weather conditions, and urban and rural scenarios across different town layouts. An annotation effort by us resulted in the labeling of a more focused dataset of 4,113 images from a broader set of 160,000 generated through sensor fusion,stereo camera and LIDAR overlayed model. The object detection algorithm used in this work was YOLOv7. The nuance of this work comes from the testing of enhancements made in this new model over previous models of YOLO. Comparisons were also made to some other recent methods for object detection in autonomous vehicle applications. The main object classes of interest were cars, pedestrians, and cyclists, because these are the most dangerous classes with which an Autonomous Vehicles might have a collision. Detection capacity for the YOLOv7 model dramatically improved over previous iterations, from 100 epochs to 700 epochs. At an intersection over union (IoU) threshold of 0.5, YOLOv7 achieved a mean average precision (mAP) of 76.3%, which is better than its predecessors with an increase of 12%. YOLOv7's performance also varied depending on the target class, with cars being the most accurately detected object class, showing a precision of 0.841, a recall of 0.843, and mAP values at the 0.5 and 0.5:0.95 thresholds of 0.835 and 0.590, respectively. In real-world applications, YOLOv7 should yield impressive results for detecting and tracking a wide variety of object classes across many different environments. While the thesis robustly validates the performance improvements of Autonomous Vehicles systems within simulated settings, future work should focus on the physical implementation of these technologies in actual vehicles and testing in real-world scenarios. In Addition, further research should explore integrating real-time object avoidance capabilities to enhance the practical applicability and safety of autonomous vehicles in dynamic and unpredictable environments. 2025-01-31T08:00:00Z thesis application/pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/2422 https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3466/viewcontent/Navigating_the_Future_Advancing_Autonomous_Vehicles_through_Robust_Target_Recognition_and_Real_Time_Avoidance.pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3466/filename/0/type/additional/viewcontent/IRB_Approval_Form___Mohammed_Ahmed_Mohammed_Hussein.pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3466/filename/1/type/additional/viewcontent/Turnitin_receipt___Mohammed_Ahmed_Mohammed_Hussein.pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3466/filename/2/type/additional/viewcontent/Signature_page___Mohammed_Ahmed_Mohammed_Hussein.pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3466/filename/3/type/additional/viewcontent/Copyright_and_availability_____Mohammed_Ahmed_Mohammed_Hussein.pdf Theses and Dissertations AUC Knowledge Fountain Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) - Object Recognition - YOLOv7 - CARLA Simulator- Object Avoidance - Sensor Fusion - Simulation Environments - Machine Learning - Object Detection Algorithms - Safety and Reliability in AVs Navigation, Guidance, Control, and Dynamics Robotics
spellingShingle Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) - Object Recognition - YOLOv7 - CARLA Simulator- Object Avoidance - Sensor Fusion - Simulation Environments - Machine Learning - Object Detection Algorithms - Safety and Reliability in AVs
Navigation, Guidance, Control, and Dynamics
Robotics
Hussein, Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed
Navigating the Future Advancing Autonomous Vehicles through Robust Target Recognition and Real-Time Avoidance
title Navigating the Future Advancing Autonomous Vehicles through Robust Target Recognition and Real-Time Avoidance
title_full Navigating the Future Advancing Autonomous Vehicles through Robust Target Recognition and Real-Time Avoidance
title_fullStr Navigating the Future Advancing Autonomous Vehicles through Robust Target Recognition and Real-Time Avoidance
title_full_unstemmed Navigating the Future Advancing Autonomous Vehicles through Robust Target Recognition and Real-Time Avoidance
title_short Navigating the Future Advancing Autonomous Vehicles through Robust Target Recognition and Real-Time Avoidance
title_sort navigating the future advancing autonomous vehicles through robust target recognition and real time avoidance
topic Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) - Object Recognition - YOLOv7 - CARLA Simulator- Object Avoidance - Sensor Fusion - Simulation Environments - Machine Learning - Object Detection Algorithms - Safety and Reliability in AVs
Navigation, Guidance, Control, and Dynamics
Robotics
url https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/2422
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3466/viewcontent/Navigating_the_Future_Advancing_Autonomous_Vehicles_through_Robust_Target_Recognition_and_Real_Time_Avoidance.pdf
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3466/filename/0/type/additional/viewcontent/IRB_Approval_Form___Mohammed_Ahmed_Mohammed_Hussein.pdf
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3466/filename/1/type/additional/viewcontent/Turnitin_receipt___Mohammed_Ahmed_Mohammed_Hussein.pdf
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3466/filename/2/type/additional/viewcontent/Signature_page___Mohammed_Ahmed_Mohammed_Hussein.pdf
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3466/filename/3/type/additional/viewcontent/Copyright_and_availability_____Mohammed_Ahmed_Mohammed_Hussein.pdf
work_keys_str_mv AT husseinmohammedahmedmohammed navigatingthefutureadvancingautonomousvehiclesthroughrobusttargetrecognitionandrealtimeavoidance