Title

Practical Challenges to Deploying Highly Automated Vehicles

Time

1:40pm - 3:00pm

Location

1605 Tilia, Room 1103, West Village

Abstract

This talk introduces some history of road vehicle automation and the SAE terminology for describing and classifying driving automation systems. It then focuses on the importance of connectivity of vehicles (vehicle-vehicle and vehicle-infrastructure) in order for automation to have favorable, rather than unfavorable, impacts on traffic congestion, smoothness, safety and energy/environmental impacts. The primary technical challenges in perception and safety assurance are then discussed, leading to conservative estimates of the time that is likely to be needed to introduce driving automation systems of different levels of capability in different operational design domains, and the additional time that will be needed for these systems to permeate the active vehicle fleet.

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Steven Shladover has been researching road vehicle automation systems for 45 years, beginning with his masters and doctoral theses at M.I.T. He was the Program Manager, Mobility at the California PATH Program of the Institute of Transportation Studies of the University of California at Berkeley until his retirement in November 2017. He led PATH’s pioneering research on automated highway systems, including its participation in the National Automated Highway Systems Consortium from 1994-98, and has continued research on fully and partially automated vehicle systems since then. This work has included definition of operating concepts, modeling of automated system operations and benefits, and design, development and testing of full-scale prototype vehicle systems. His target applications have included cooperative adaptive cruise control, automated truck platoons, automated buses and fully-automated vehicles in an automated highway system.

Dr. Shladover joined the PATH Program in 1989, after eleven years at Systems Control, Inc. and Systems Control Technology, Inc., where he led the company’s efforts in transportation systems engineering and computer-aided control engineering software products. He chaired the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee on Intelligent Transportation Systems from 2004-2010, and currently chairs the TRB Committee on Vehicle-Highway Automation. Dr. Shladover leads the U.S. delegation to ISO/TC204/WG14, which is developing international standards for “vehicle-roadway warning and control systems”.