Abstracts of 2000-01 Automated Highway Systems Papers
Title: PROGRESSIVE DEPLOYMENT STEPS LEADING TOWARD AN AUTOMATED HIGHWAY SYSTEM Author: Shladover, SE Corporate Author: Transportation Research Board Series: Transportation Research Record - Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1727 Pages: pp 154-161 Date: 2000 ISBN: 0309067340 ISSN: 03611981 Project Number: 1727-019 Features: 3 Fig. 18 Ref. Abstract:
The most serious challenge to the credibility of highway automation as a potential solution to transportation problems has been the lack of a convincing deployment strategy. Such a strategy is needed to show how to advance, step by step, from today's transportation system to a future system that includes automated highway systems (AHSs). The existing literature on AHS deployment is reviewed, and a set of principles that can be used to govern the design of AHS deployment strategies is suggested. A deployment sequence for AHSs is proposed, beginning with adaptive cruise control and then adding elements of vehicle-vehicle cooperation and lane protection to build toward AHS capabilities within the constraints of technological and human factors and economic feasibility. Finally, some example deployment "road maps" are shown for transit buses, heavy trucks, and light-duty passenger vehicles.Notes: This paper appears in Transportation Research Record No. 1727, Advanced Traffic Management Systems and Automated Highway Systems 2000. Descriptors: Automated highway systems // Deployment // Strategic planning // Constraints // Transit buses // Heavy duty trucks // Light vehicles Status: AVAILABLE FROM TRB BOOKSTORE
Report Number Title UCB-ITS-PRR-2001-18 Development and Performance Evaluation of AVCSS Deployment Sequences to Advance from Today’s Driving Environment to Full Automation
Author(s) Steven Shladover, Joel VanderWerf, Mark A. Miller, Natalia Kourjanskaia, Hariharan Krishnan
Date of Final Publication 2001-08-01
Number of Pages 82 Price $15 MOU# 366
Abstract This report presents the findings of its investigation into deployment sequences to better
understand the paths that could be taken from today’s driving environment to vehicle-highway automation. One of the most vexing problems has always been that of determining how to advance from the present-day manually-controlled vehicles to the future fully automated vehicles.
Considerable research attention has been devoted to defining the architecture and operating protocols, as well as the technology, of automated highway systems. Rather less attention has been devoted to defining the steps by which we can get there. Initially, targets of opportunity were identified for accelerating progress toward highway automation, taking account of the operational constraints.
After reviewing existing literature on automated highway systems deployment, a set of principles to govern the design of deployment strategies is suggested followed by proposed deployment sequences for automated highway systems, beginning with adaptive cruise control and then adding elements of vehiclevehicle cooperation and lane protection to build toward automated highway systems capabilities within constraints of technological, human factors and economic feasibility.A general deployment staging sequence is then presented along with example deployment “roadmaps” shown for transit buses, heavy trucks and light-duty passenger vehicles. Finally, we discuss the findings of our modeling and evaluation work for the beginning stages of a specific deployment sequence for light-duty passenger vehicles in the setting of a single highway lane.
This sequence incorporates the use of cooperative adaptive cruise control along with conventional or autonomous adaptive cruise control and manual-driven vehicles. The evaluation assesses the impact of each of these three operational driving modes on traffic flow dynamics and highway capacity as well as of increasing proportions of both autonomous and cooperative adaptive cruise control vehicles relative to manually driven vehicles.Such effects are difficult to estimate from field tests on highways because of their necessarily low market penetration of these vehicles. Our approach uses Monte Carlo simulations based on detailed modeling work to estimate the quantitative effects of varying proportions of vehicle control types on lane capacity and on queue lengths and wait times at on-ramps.
The results of this study can help to provide realistic estimates of the likely effects of the introduction of adaptive cruise control to the vehicle fleet, so that transportation system managers can recognize that the autonomous adaptive cruise control systems now entering the market are unlikely to have significant positive or negative effects on traffic flow. An additional value of studying such systems in this way is that these scenarios can represent the first steps in a deployment sequence leading to an automated highway system.
Benefits gained at early stages in this sequence, particularly through the introduction of cooperative adaptive cruise control with priority access to designated (but not necessarily dedicated) lanes can help to provide support for further investment in and development of automated highway systems.
Keywords progressive deployment sequences, automated highway systems, adaptive cruise
control, cooperative adaptive cruise control, highway capacity, traffic flow, modeling, evaluationThe full report (82 pages, pdf format) is available from the PATH publications website at the University of California, Berkeley, California
Last modified: January 02, 2004