Title

Traffic flow smoothing at scale

Time

1:40pm - 3:00pm

Location

Remote instruction

Abstract

The majority of the best-selling cars in the US are now available with SAE level-one automated driving features such as adaptive cruise control. As the penetration rate of these vehicles grows on the roadways, it is now possible to consider controlling the bulk human-piloted traffic flow by carefully designing these driver-assist features. This talk will discuss modeling, simulation, and field demonstration advancements that are needed to control automated vehicles to stabilize traffic flow at scale. Prior work on a closed course established that automated vehicles can eliminate human-generated phantom traffic jams that seemingly occur without cause, reducing fuel consumption by up to 40%. The talk will highlight the research challenges and progress towards demonstrating traffic flow smoothing with a fleet of connected and automated vehicles on the I-24 Smart Corridor in Tennessee, as part of the CIRCLES Consortium.

Biographical Sketch

Dan Work is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the Institute for Software Integrated Systems at Vanderbilt University. He has held research appointments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2010–17), Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (2015, 2020), Microsoft Research Redmond (2009), and Nokia Research Center Palo Alto (2007–09). His research on automated vehicles has appeared in numerous media outlets including ABC’s Good Morning America, Reuters, Wired, and MIT Technology Review. Prof. Work was named a 2018 Gilbreth Lecturer by the National Academy of Engineering, and a CAREER Award recipient from the National Science Foundation in 2014.