Fresno State Transportation Institute

CrossBOT for Safer Pedestrian Crossings

Project Overview:

The study introduces a novel solution for pedestrian safety in school zones: a Digital Twin Smart Robot equipped with sensors and artificial intelligence to facilitate safe crossings. By detecting pedestrian and cyclist presence and traffic flow, the system alerts both drivers and pedestrians/cyclists of potential dangers, offering a promising approach to enhance road safety in vulnerable areas.

Key Findings:

The Smart Robot system exhibited excellent performance in pedestrian and vehicle detection during road crossing tests, demonstrating the effectiveness of the trained machine learning algorithms.

Integrated with advanced software, hardware subsystems, and traffic control flowcharts, the system ensures safe pedestrian crossings by coordinating traffic signals and continuously monitoring pedestrian presence and traffic flow.

With high validation accuracies for pedestrian and vehicle detection achieved by Deep Neural Networks, the system offers real-time visualization of Lidar sensor data, enabling accurate identification of cars and pedestrians during road crossings.

Full Report (PDF)

Media Coverage

Was live on the KTVU Fox 2 News: California researchers create crossing-guard robot, by Pamela Cook, Aug. 28, 2024

NBC Bay Area News: California professor creates a robot crossing guard, by NBC Bay Area staff, August 7, 2024.

East Bay Times: San Jose researcher designs robot to help children cross streets safely, by Kristin J. Bender, August 9, 2024.

The Mercury News: San Jose researcher designs robot to help children cross streets safely, by Kristin J. Bender, August 9, 2024.

The Orange County Register: Researcher designs robot to help children cross streets safely, by Kristin J. Bender, August 8, 2024.

Azerbaijan

ETV: "Researcher creates a robot to help children cross streets safely." Read more

Brazil

Reviltec: "Pesquisador projeta robô para ajudar crianças a atravessar ruas com segurança." Read more

China

Mandarinian News: "Researcher designs robot to help children cross streets safely." Read more

Italy

Aibay: "Robot guida aiuta i bimbi ad attraversare." Read more

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Industry Recognition

At the 2025 Fresno Summit on March 7, 2025, Dr. Kulhandjian was honored with the New Product/Technology Award for his vision and leadership in advancing transportation solutions and shaping a sustainable future. This award recognizes the innovative of the CrossBOT project, a smart crossing-guard robot designed to enhance pedestrian safety in school zones.

Reseach funded by California State University Transportation Consortium, CSUTC (https://transweb.sjsu.edu/csutc)

Explore Research Projects by Dr. Kulhandjian

Learn about the current research projects and academic contributions of Dr. Kulhandjian, a dedicated faculty member in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Discover how his work is contributing to the Central Valley.

To View More About His Research Projects