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Transportation Research Board - 95th Annual Meeting

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The meeting program will cover all transportation modes, with more than 5,000 presentations in nearly 750 sessions and workshops addressing topics of interest to all attendees—policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government, industry, and academic institutions. A number of sessions and workshops will focus on the spotlight theme for the 2016 TRB Annual Meeting, Research Convergence for a Multi-Modal Future.

TRBConnectNov15a

Connected and Automated Vehicles: 9th University Transportation Centers Conference

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Few issues are emerging more quickly, or have the potential to spur revolutionary change, than that of connected/automated vehicles (CV/AV). This is true not only for highways, but across all transportation modes. This Spotlight Conference, which is organized around the four cluster areas identified in the NCHRP report “Connected/Automated Vehicle Research Roadmap for AASHTO”, will focus on the impact of CV/AV on transportation, including planning, policy, operations, land use, design, freight movements, and transit.

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Autonomous Tech Scales Capitol Hill

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Burney Simpson

The autonomous transportation industry brought its game to Capitol Hill this week, holding a nearly all-day event that featured speeches from a U.S. Senator, four Congressmen, and a number of driverless leaders, all over the course of a luncheon, a seminar, and a showcase event/cocktail party with several dozen of the top firms in the business.

Not bad for a day’s work.

Trade group ITS America put on ‘The Future of Mobility: Rethinking Transportation for the Next 30 Years’ and garnered the participation of Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, and Representatives Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat, Rodney Davis, an Illinois Republican, and Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon.

While much of the conversation was positive and friendly, a few of the seminar panelists took the opportunity to raise issues that Congress may have to address someday.

  • Data Privacy and Security — Daniel Morgan, chief data officer with the US Department of Transportation, noted that the security and privacy of citizen travel data was essential but that the information could be beneficial for metropolitan planners. Morgan floated the idea that a third party firm be responsible for collecting and storing the data if people objected to the federal government holding it.
  • Reserving DSRC wavelength for V2V and V2I — Alan Korn, an executive with heavy-truck parts supplier Meritor WABCO, said the Dedicated Short-Range Communications 5.9 GHz spectrum must be reserved for Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure communications to ensure autonomous driving safety. Later, Sen. Peters said that new technology may allow for the sharing of the 5.9 spectrum with other Wi-Fi users.
  • Driverless Timeline — Supplying a welcome dose of reality was Tom Dingus, director of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI). Dingus said developing a truly autonomous system would be considerably more difficult and probably take longer than some recent studies and press reports suggest. Driverless vehicles will have to be safer than the much-maligned human driver but consider that the average human has one rear-end crash every 25 years, and makes 3 million braking decision in that time, said Dingus. “It is very difficult to build a system that is that robust,” said Dingus.

The exhibition hall featured 22 organizations involved with autonomous transportation development, including Eberle Design, Econolite, GM, Iteris, the University of Michigan Mobility Transformation Center, NXP Semiconductors, Southwest Research Institute, and Uber.

VTTI was there too taking a bit of a victory lap after its successful demo this week on a nearby highway of its driverless Cadillac SRX. The ride along featured Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and generated extensive media coverage (See “Virginia Seeks Autonomous Research Lead,” October 20, 2015).

The showcase garnered a little more exposure for the technology with another half-dozen members of Congress visiting the exhibit hall to check out the firms on display, according to an ITS spokesperson.

The day also offered an exhibit of a DeLorean car from an old movie that predicted people would fly on skateboardy-type things. This fascinated a number of Gen-Yers and Millennials who took selfies.

Photo: United States Capitol, 2015, Matt C.

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ITS California Buzzes on DOT Grants, Autonomous Levels Concept

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John Estrada

The annual meeting of ITS California was held last week in Southern California.  The major buzz at the show was the previous week’s announcement by the US DOT that initial winners in grants for next-generation V2V and V2I technology were proposals from New York, Florida and Wyoming.  Many of the participants at the show felt very strongly that an award should have gone to California. It will be interesting to see what if any of those winning projects get off the ground.

There were quite a few interesting speakers at the show.  A couple of highlights included:

Greg Larson from CalTrans who led a panel that considered whether bus and truck automation should come before auto automation. Greg presented a chart from Richard Bishop of Bishop Consulting that showed the various levels of automation leading to autonomous cars as described by the SAE. Rather than a detailed description of what makes a vehicle fit into various levels, Richard describes it as follows:

  • Level 0: hands and feet ON;
  • Level 1: hands or feet OFF;
  • Level 2: hands and feet OFF, eyes ON;
  • Level 3: hands, feet, eyes OFF, brain on;
  • Level 4: hands, feet, eyes, brain OFF - Constrained environments;
  • Level 5: hands, feet, eyes, brain OFF – Unconstrained.
This seems like a great way to both remember and understand them.
Other interesting presentations included Aravind Kailas of Volvo who discussed truck automation and the future of mobility. He made a strong case as to why we are headed toward a world of shared mobility.
There was also an interesting panel on cybersecurity that gave the audience a true sense of the diversity and depth of the issue. Ed Fok from US DOT showed how easy it is easy to block off Internet access while Dominic Nessi of the LA Airport discussed cybersecurity challenges at a large, international airport. Gary Miskell from the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority discussed the issues facing transit authorities and the challenges of securing a mobile fleet of public buses.

There were also a series of demonstrations of connected vehicle technologies from eTrans Systems, Econolite, Bosch and Arada Systems.

This was our second year at the show and in that short time it was clear how quickly technology is advancing in the work of Intelligent Transportation.

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Silicon Valley Buses Adopt DSRC and V2I to Speed Rides, Cut Fuel Use

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Burney Simpson

Riding the bus isn’t usually high-tech but a new app in Silicon Valley designed to make public bus operations more efficient is using Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) to conduct Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication.

Arada Systems teamed with eTrans Systems to develop the computer-enabled Smart Stop that gives waiting commuters the capability to send a request to the bus driver that they want to be picked up. Smart Stop was developed with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Agency, the county agency that operates the buses.

The VTA is implementing Smart Stop to make its bus routes more efficient and to lower fuel use.

“Connected vehicle technologies can contribute significantly to creating a simplified ridership experience, allowing buses to communicate with passengers at bus stops to ensure no passenger is missed yet only stopping when there is a passenger for the specific route to save fuel,” said Gary Miskell, chief information officer with the VTA.

Bus stops will be equipped with a hardened mobile computer with a 10-inch touch screen that can conduct V2I communication with a moving bus by using the DSRC wave length.

Fairfax, Va.-based eTrans specializes in the development and security of connected vehicle systems. Clients include automotive, transit, insurance and academic institutions.

eTrans Systems is pleased to lead the smart-stop project with the VTA and Arada Systems,” said John Estrada, CEO of eTrans. “Smart-Stop will both improve and increase ridership in Silicon Valley.”

“Arada Systems is pleased to partner with VTA to promote smart ridership”, said Praveen Singh, CEO of Arada Systems, Inc., “Our goal is to show the while DSRC is imperative for vehicle safety, it can also be used for other smart applications like Smart-Stop.” “

Vehicle to Infrastructure technology allows vehicles to interact with each other when travelling at high-speeds, providing drivers warnings about potential hazards, and possibly avoiding accidents. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) projects that this kind of advanced communication can reduce up to 80 percent of the vehicle crashes in the U.S.

Troy, Mich.-based Arada Systems develops, licenses and provides end to end solutions for the next generation connected and semi-autonomous vehicle technologies.

Photo: Tri Met Bus by Swong95765, 2014.

Events

TRBlogo2014right2

Transportation Research Board - 95th Annual Meeting

/0 Comments/in , , , , ,

Register

The meeting program will cover all transportation modes, with more than 5,000 presentations in nearly 750 sessions and workshops addressing topics of interest to all attendees—policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government, industry, and academic institutions. A number of sessions and workshops will focus on the spotlight theme for the 2016 TRB Annual Meeting, Research Convergence for a Multi-Modal Future.

TRBConnectNov15a

Connected and Automated Vehicles: 9th University Transportation Centers Conference

/0 Comments/in , , , , , ,

Few issues are emerging more quickly, or have the potential to spur revolutionary change, than that of connected/automated vehicles (CV/AV). This is true not only for highways, but across all transportation modes. This Spotlight Conference, which is organized around the four cluster areas identified in the NCHRP report “Connected/Automated Vehicle Research Roadmap for AASHTO”, will focus on the impact of CV/AV on transportation, including planning, policy, operations, land use, design, freight movements, and transit.