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Texas A&M to Develop $150 Million Center for Driverless, Robotics Technology

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Burney Simpson

Texas A&M University is investing $150 million in a 2,000-acre research and development campus that will include autonomous vehicle research.

The campus will be both a development center for private firms and an educational hub for students offering four-year degrees.

Along with driverless technology, the campus will offer research on robotics, smart power grids, and water systems.

“It will bridge the ‘valley of death’ between product development and the marketplace,” M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of engineering, said in a statement.

The site is on a former military base in Bryan, Texas, about 100 miles from Houston, and Austin, the state capital.

The site now includes the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and is called the Riverside Campus. It will be renamed the RELLIS Campus.

The TTI has been active in connected vehicles, freight movement, and other driverless vehicle projects. In November it named Christopher Poe its connected and automated vehicle (CV/AV) transportation strategy lead.

It reported last year it was involved in 40 CA/AV projects at the federal, state and local level. The I-35 Connected Work Zone project involved long-haul commercial trucks gathering road information from highway sensors (See “Texas Tests Connected Freight Trucks Along I-35“).

Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp said the school is in talks with a number of companies to conduct research at the center, including Japan’s Kubota Tractors, according to the Fort Worth Star Telegram.  

“Unless we create a lot of young farmers, driverless tractors may plow our fields in the not too-distant future. Otherwise, how are we going to feed the world?” Sharp said.

The school reported it already has the $150 million development costs locked down through a combination of private sector pledges and state budget funding.

The budget for the project calls for allocating $12 million to build the Advanced Research in Transportation Technology Building where companies will focus on autonomous vehicle technology.

The bulk of the budget, $73 million, will be spent on the Center for Infrastructure Renewal, which calls for assisting the private sector in applying new ideas to infrastructure redevelopment.

Texas Transportation Institute

Texas A&M Transportation Institute

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Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) develops solutions to the problems and challenges facing all modes of transportation. The Institute conducts over 600 research projects annually with about 200 sponsors at all levels of government and the private sector. In the laboratory and the classroom, TTI researchers help prepare students for transportation careers.

SanFranBay

AVS 2014 Breakout Session: Near-term Deployment

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The 2014 Automated Vehicle Symposium is coming up in San Francisco this month (July 15-17th). Some of the organizers and panelists of the show have provided insights into several of the breakout sessions that will be held. Driverless Transportation will be sharing some of those insights throughout the next two weeks. For more information about the event and the individual sessions, click here.

Title: Near-term Connected/Automated Technology Deployment Opportunities.

A brief overview of the session:
Automated vehicles by themselves can deliver many but not all of the benefits possible through automation.  Automation assisted by connection to other vehicles and the infrastructure and by roadway features such as managed lanes may be needed to unlock the full potential inherent in automation. Connected automation systems that include a role for an engaged driver can provide many benefits in the nearer-term, as part of the decades-long transition to a fully automated highway system. This breakout session will focus on ways to advance the development of an automated and connected highway system that will support increasingly capable vehicles and deliver safety and highway system operational benefits both in advance of and in addition to the benefits associated with fully automated vehicles.

According to Ginger Goodin, Senior Research Engineer for the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and one of the organizers of the breakout session, one of the goals of this session is to focus on defining what the near term deployment opportunities are, how can the safety and the benefits of fully automated vehicles be advanced, what does the near term look like and how do we get to the long term.

The session will focus on three forces and groups that play a role in accelerating early deployment and realizing safety and congestion benefits in the near-term.

  1. The first force is technology, and the OEMs and suppliers that will be developing it. What are the connected technologies that are on the horizon that can deliver benefits over the next several decades?
  2. The second are the innovators from the infrastructure side. Basically finding out who the owners and operators are and what are the barriers that will need to be overcome.
  3. The third force is determining what the value proposition is for both private and public sectors.

Ginger got involved in the first TRB Road Vehicle Automation workshop in 2012 where she presented on managed lanes. Her background as a researcher is in the area of road pricing, and she was previously the Chair of the TRB Managed Lanes Committee.  Her involvement in TRB connected her with the first workshop organizers.  Since then, she and other workshop organizers have conducted research on policy implications of automated vehicles, supporting policy makers involved in infrastructure at the state and local government levels.

There are seventeen speakers in this breakout session that include individuals from federal, state and local governments, the private sector, the military, and economic development. A list of all of the speakers can be found here.

Attendees of this session can expect lively discussion with thought provoking questions. This is an opportunity to be part of the visioning process of where do we go from here. Ginger hopes for a diverse group of people to attend as she feels the best discussions arise when you have people from different backgrounds.

AVS14

Automated Vehicles Symposium 2014

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The 2014 Automated Vehicles Symposium is coming to San Francisco next month (July 15-17, July 14-18 with ancillary meetings). The meeting is being designed and organized by AUVSI and TRB. This looks to be one of the, if not the, premier event on Automated Vehicles in 2014.

This is the third year for this type of meeting for both AUVSI and TRB; however, in previous years each organization has had its own meeting. This is the first year that the two groups are working together. Since the two will not be competing, an even stronger program should be provided this year.

The original TRB automated vehicle workshop in 2012, was very education focused. That meeting focused on providing information to the community about the state of the industry and in particular what was happening outside of the U.S. Last year’s TRB workshop focused on developing research needs statements. Some of the research topics identified there have since been used by research groups, commercial entities and government agencies to focus their research in this space, and many are being posted to TRB’s Research Needs website.

The goal for this year’s program is even broader. Although some additional research needs will be defined, many of the breakout sessions will focus on broader goals. These will include synthesizing the existing research, identifying barriers to deployment and incentives to encourage further development in the industry.

One of the goals of this year’s meeting is to make it highly interactive and encourage questions and participation from the audience. Consequently, the plenary program is centered around presenters giving short “TED” like talks followed by interactive panel sessions. The organizing committee is working very hard to avoid “death by PowerPoint”.

Jane Lappin of the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center and Chair, TRB Intelligent Transportation Systems Committee and one of the key planners of this symposium as well as the two previous TRB workshop stated: “We are very excited about this year’s meeting. We’ve lined up a tremendous set of speakers and breakout sessions. I really think this will be out best meeting ever”.

The meeting will open on Tuesday morning with speakers who are leaders from the automotive industry. Tuesday’s keynote speaker is Dr. Ralf Herrtwich, Director Driver Assistance and Chassis Systems, Group Research and Advanced Engineering, Daimler AG. Dr Herrtwich will be followed by Dr. Jan Becker, Senior Manager, Autonomous Technologies Group, Robert Bosch, LLC., Cris Pavloff, Advanced Technology Engineer, BMW Group Technology Office and Dr. Maarten Sierhuis, Director, Nissan Research Center Silicon Valley. After the presentations, there will be a panel where the audience can ask questions of the group.

Following this is a panel on Digital Infrastructure with Ogi Redzic from Nokia HERE and Andrew Chatham, Principal Engineer, Self-Driving Cars, with Google, moderated by Bob Denaro.

Following Digital Infrastructure is a panel discussing Technology Challenges. Many people feel that the technology challenges have been met and the big hurdles are legal and consumer acceptance. However, Dr. Steven Shladover, Program Manager, Mobility at PATH at the University of California at Berkeley feels that this is far from true and thus this is a very important panel. Joining Dr. Shladover is Dr. Alberto Broggi, VisLab; Dr. Markos Papageorgiou, Director, Dynamic Systems & Simulation Laboratory, Technical University of Crete; Dr. John Leonard, Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering Associate Department, MIT; and Michael Wagner, Carnegie Mellon University.

Following this panel, Steve Underwood will present the results of an online survey of the AVS2014 registrants in which they have expressed their opinions about the importance of the various challenges to deployment of automated systems and their predictions about when various levels of road vehicle automation will become commercially available. This will help set the stage for the afternoon breakout discussions by giving the participants an indication of what their peers think about the future of automated driving systems.

After lunch, the symposium will split into 10 breakout sessions. Each of these is a virtual symposium in and of itself. These sessions include:

  1.     Evolutionary and Revolutionary Pathways to Automated Transit and Shared Mobility
  2. Regional Planning and Modeling Implications of Driverless Cars 
  3.     Roadway Management and Operations with Automated Vehicles 
  4.     Truck Automation Opportunities 
  5.     Legal Accelerators and Brakes 
  6.     The State and Future Direction of Automated-Vehicle Human Factors
  7.     Near-Term Connected/Automated Technology Deployment Opportunities 
  8.     Personal Vehicle Automation Commercialization 
  9. Technology Roadmap, Maturity and Performance: Operational Requirements for Vehicle-Road Automation Systems and Components 
  10. Road Infrastructure Needs of Connected-Automated Vehicles 

The second day will begin with the Clifford Nass Memorial Lecture, given in memory of Prof. Clifford Nass of Stanford University, one of the leaders in the industry until he passed away last fall. Don Norman, Director, Design Lab, University of California, San Diego and Author of “The Design of Future Things” will be giving the lecture, titled The Human Side of Automation. Don is one of the pioneers in human-computer interaction and worked with Prof. Nass, so this should be a fitting tribute.

Following the pattern of the first day, there will next be a series of speakers and panels from OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers in the automotive industry. These include:

  • John Capp, Director, Electrical & Controls Systems Research & Active Safety Technology Strategy, General Motors Research & Development
  • Steffen Linkenbach, Director Systems & Technology, NAFTA, Continental
  • Patrice Reilhac, Innovation & Collaborative Research Director, Comfort & Driving Assistance Business Group, Valeo
  • Dr. Chris Urmson, Director, Self-Driving Cars, Google

Next will be a series of presentations on some of the largest and most important automation projects in Europe. Dr. Adriano Alessandrini, Università degli Studi di Roma will discuss CityMobil2: Automated Road Transport Systems in Urban Environments (including a live video feed from a current demonstration in Sardinia); Dr. Angelos Amditis, Research Director, I-Sense Group, Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS) will discuss The AdaptIVe Project: Working on Research, Legal and Deployment Issues in Europe for Automated Vehicles and Anders Tylman-Mikiewicz, General Manager, Volvo Monitoring & Concept Center, Volvo Car Corporation will present The Drive Me Project: Autonomous Driving by Volvo (the major field test planned for 2017 in Gothenburg, Sweden).

Following the reports from Europe, the symposium will then look at Societal Issues and Non-technical Challenges, with a panel moderated by Jane Lappin, Volpe National Transportation Systems Center and Chair, TRB Intelligent Transportation Systems Committee; and including presentations by Ginger Goodin, Texas Transportation Institute, Texas A&M University System; Michael Gucwa, Management Science and Engineering department, Stanford University; and Dr. Ken Laberteaux, Toyota Research Institute-North America.

The final morning will begin with reports on current activities by national and state governments. Speakers will include:

  • Kevin Dopart, Program Manager for Connected Vehicle Safety and Automation, Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, U.S. Department of Transportation
  • Nat Beuse, Associate Administrator, Vehicle Safety Research, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
  • A representative of the European Commission
  • Takumi Yamamoto, Director, ITS Policy & Program Office, Road Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport
  • Dr. Bernard C. Soriano, Deputy Director, Risk Management, California Department of Motor Vehicles

These presentations will be followed by brief summary presentations from the ten breakout discussion groups that spent the previous two afternoons in in-depth consideration of important topics associated with automation. This will be the opportunity for all of the meeting participants to learn about the key outcomes from the discussions in the breakout sessions they were not able to attend.

All in all, it looks to be an enlightening three days of presentations and panels, with the real leaders in the industry. When asked about the attendees, Dr. Shladover indicated that this was one of the really great aspects of AVS2014, because the people who have attended the previous meetings and who are expected to be coming again this year are people with a wide range of backgrounds from technology to government and research to manufacturing and everything in between. Furthermore, these were not just any people from these backgrounds but the thought leaders and decision makers.

In the coming days, we’ll provide insights into some of the breakout sessions that are part of this symposium. If you are interested in attending, space is limited, click here.

Truck Car and Bus

How Will Consumer Attitudes Impact Advanced Automotive Safety

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A significant risk for any new technology is consumer acceptance. New automobile safety technologies are no exception. The big question is: How great will the challenge of consumer acceptance be and what is the best way to address the issue?

Telematics Update posed the above question to five unique industry professionals:

  • Zac Doerzaph, Director, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute
  • Leo McCloskey, SVP –Programs, ITS America
  • Mohammad Poorsartep, PM Connected Transportation Initiative, Texas A&M Transportation Institute
  • Chris Schwarz, Senior RE, National Advanced Driving Simulator
  • Jay Joseph, Senior Manager – Product Regulatory Office, Honda

The results from the group were very mixed. Some felt this would be a great challenge while others felt it wouldn’t be much of a challenge at all. On the other hand, there was consensus that the technology is coming and that it will make a difference in vehicle safety. Each responder had a very interesting perspective.

Click here to take a look and let us know what you think.

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