Complex Systems: 'Road Vehicle Automation: History, Opportunities and Challenges' - Sept. 30, 2014

Tuesday, Sept. 30, 7-8:30 p.m. Rasmuson Hall, Room 110

Steven Shladover, research engineer at UC-Berkeley, presents a talk titled "Road Vehicle Automation: History, Opportunities and Challenges." This event is free and open to the public. Parking on campus is free after 7:30 p.m. For more information, visit the Complex Systems website.

Abstract: Road vehicle automation has recently attracted intense interest from the media, the general public and now the transportation community. This interest is largely based on serious misconceptions about the level of road vehicle automation likely achievable within the foreseeable future. This presentation addresses those misconceptions, beginning with a historical overview going back to 1939, and continuing with definitions of multiple levels of vehicle automation. The importance of communication and cooperation among automated vehicles and between these vehicles and the roadway infrastructure is illustrated with examples from experiments conducted at the PATH Program. The technical challenges that remain to be resolved before fully automated driving can become reality are also explained.

About the speaker: Steven Shladover, Sc.D., has been researching road vehicle automation systems for forty years, beginning with his master's and doctoral theses at M.I.T. He is the program manager for mobility at the California PATH Program (of the Institute of Transportation Studies of the University of California at Berkeley). 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 defining operating concepts, modeling automated system operations and benefits, as well as the 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.

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. He was the chairman of the Advanced Vehicle Control and Safety Systems Committee of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America from its founding in 1991 until 1997. Shladover leads the U.S. delegation to ISO/TC204/WG14, which is developing international standards for "vehicle-roadway warning and control systems."

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