View this page "Vehicle-Infrastructure Cooperation Research Needs"
RL...@mitretek.org
Several TRB, ITS America and MDOT committees co-sponsored a Workshop
on Research Needed to Support Vehicle-Infrastructure Cooperation in
Troy Michigan, July 20 - 21, 2004. The workshop was convened to
explore research questions important to support development and
deployment of vehicle-infrastructure cooperation, for example, Vehicle-
Infrastructure Integration (VII). An important collateral benefit
surfaced: the workshop served to inform an ITS community who had not
until this point been engaged in considering how VII could be used as
a tool to address highway operational and safety issues.
The workshop provided for an open and free exchange of ideas through
wide ranging discussions.
More than eighty participants with diverse backgrounds - including
Federal, State and local governments, vehicle manufacturers,
communication suppliers, map and other "content" providers, venture
capital, OSTP, Research Institutions and academia - contributed. Many
of these participants were long-standing contributors to ITS in the
USA, Europe, and Asia. The resulting broad-based sets of
recommendations were assembled from the depth and breadth of
experience of the participants and their energetic debate during the
workshop.
The intent of the workshop was straightforward, and we believe in the
end realized: identify basic components and priorities for a five- to
ten-year program of research that will support the implementation of a
cooperative vehicle-infrastructure environment in the U.S. and produce
a Recommended Research Action Plan for Vehicle-Infrastructure
Cooperation. The inputs toward this recommended research plan are
currently being compiled; interim results are posted on <http://
webboard.trb.org/~AHB30>, and synopses will be developed by early
September, with written and oral reports provided shortly thereafter.
Some threads for recommended research are already evident:
Intersection safety is an area of initial emphasis; institutional
arrangements rather than purely technology issues are the primary
challenges to VII. Other emerging threads are perhaps not as expected
but nonetheless compelling:
- An incremental approach using public, truck and rental car fleets
could be the first consideration.
- Safety, while clearly high priority, should not be the explicit
driver for or beneficiary from VII - a careful benefit-cost study is
indicated, and
- We should not assume that DSRC, while an important enabling
technology, is the only wireless means that VII in its final form may
use.
The workshop began with a series of panel sessions featuring notable
participants in the emerging VII field: Mike Freitas from ITS JPO;
Jim Wright from AASHTO; Brent Bair from the RCOC; and Dave Acton
representing General Motors were among them. Gloria Jeff, MDOT
Director, gave the keynote address at the first evening's dinner.
Four rounds of breakout discussions and reports began with "What's
the Environment?"-What are the predetermined factors and critical
uncertainties which set the stage for vehicle-infrastructure
cooperation? With this backdrop, three following sessions addressed:
"Targeted User Services" that could benefit from vehicle-
infrastructure cooperation (Ralph Robinson of Ford and Jim Schultz of
MDOT were particularly helpful, providing the Vehicle OEM and State
DOT "use case" scenarios for us to consider); "Pathways to
Deployment", in which participants discussed (and sought to overcome)
technical, institutional and economic issues with vehicle-
infrastructure cooperation in the context of a number of plausible
deployment scenarios; and, finally, specific elements of the necessary
"Enabling Research."
Click on http://groups.google.com/group/TRB-AHB30/web/vehicle-infrastructure-cooperation-research-needs?hl=en
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