Intelligent vehicle highway systems: challenge for the future

The communications segment of an overall intelligent vehicle highway system (IVHS) is one of the most critical and complex issues that the designers of the systems and the planners of the field operational tests have to tackle. The mobile environment renders communications complicated. Incremental implementation is needed to ensure substantive final penetration of IVHS services. Stringent reliability and performance measures are demanded by the safety aspect of IVHS. There are basic system design requirements of noninterference to the motorists. Attempting to contain most of such crucial and often conflicting requirements for the implementation of IVHS, the authors endeavored to develop an IVHS architectural strategy for its phased deployment. Finally, the authors describe and propose a distributed communication system architecture concept that has its unique advantages. >

Intelligent vehicle highway systems (IVHS) are at work on San Jose's streets and freeways. Moving thousands of vehicles to and from the San Jose Arena, while minimizing impacts to businesses and residents has required the development of advanced traffic management strategies. State-of-the-art IVHS applications are being used to provide attendees with current traffic and parking conditions in order to facilitate and simplify the decision-making process as they travel to and from events. San Jose's Motorist Information System (MIS) is one of the most advanced systems of urban roadway traffic technologies being employed in the USA today. In addition to the efforts being made in moving motorists efficiently to and from events, San Jose is developing a program referred to as Emergency Vehicle Link (EV-Link). This application of IVHS technologies employs automated vehicle locating systems and traffic signal timing strategies to assist moving emergency vehicles swiftly and safely on city streets when responding to incidents. The City of San Jose and its staff are committed to developing a transportation system that utilizes the latest technologies that results in safe and efficient movement of people and goods on the roadways. Managing our facilities through enhanced technology allows us to meet our commitments in an environmentally sensitive way and helps to maximize utilization of our existing facilities.

Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems (IVHS) is a major U.S. Department of Transportation initiative to improve the safety and efficiency of our nation's highways. IVHS includes five related components: Advanced Traffic Management Systems (ATMS); Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS); Commercial Vehicle Operations (CVO); Advanced Vehicle Control Systems (AVCS); and, Advanced Public Transportation Systems (APTS). Although the Federal Highway Administration has initially chosen to address each of these components separately, a number of issues are shared by all components. One critical common element deals with the capabilities of the humans in the system. Appropriate guidelines that consider the needs and capabilities of operators, maintainers, and users will be critical for efficient functioning of each system. Efforts are underway to define and resolve critical human factors issues related to IVHS components. This symposium addresses four of the five more highway related IVHS components. For each of these components, presenters will define the key engineering characteristics, hypothetical scenarios that focus on human-system interfaces, and examples of human factors issues that must be considered in the design of IVHS systems.

Urban traffic congestion, inefficient use of energy and excessive emissions are replacing high socio-economic costs on an urban population. The advances made in the intelligent vehicle highway system (IVHS) technologies have increased the success potential of countermeasures. The traffic congestion, energy and environmental problems are introduced. A description of the relevant IVHS technologies is given. The use of IVHS technologies to improvements is described. Examples are drawn from North American as well as advanced Asian cities. Conclusions and recommendations are presented.

This paper explores the different functional roles of digital road map databases in an overall Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems (IVHS) environment, using examples from project Pathfinder, TravTek, and other IVHS configurations. Particular emphasis is placed on information requirements necessary to integrate these subsystems into a mature IVHS, supporting multiple product offerings.

Research in the area of vehicle control in intelligent vehicle highway systems (IVHS) has primarily focussed on either purely longitudinal or purely lateral control of vehicles. This paper introduces transition manoeuvres in such systems. These include vehicle merge, split and lane change procedures. A combined longitudinal and lateral vehicle model has been developed to study this problem. The paper discusses the development of control algorithms for controlling vehicles in such situations. The system does not have a well defined relative degree and hence the traditional I/O linearized approach is not possible without further modifications. The paper presents a method for using the structure of our outputs to solve the control problem. >

A reliable estimation algorithm for the absolute velocity of a vehicle has been required in studies by California PATH (Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways) to design stable and robust controller for a vehicle for intelligent vehicle highway systems (IVHS). This paper investigates the feasibility of using magnetic markers, already presented for lateral vehicle guidance in IVHS, for estimating vehicle position and velocity. In this paper, the use of a hybrid observer is proposed. Vehicle longitudinal motion control based on magnetic markers is also considered and evaluated by simulations.

Measuring IVHS impacts using computer spreadsheet programs

Minnesota has launched a broad program for the rapid implementation of congestion reduction measures. This program consists of both the rapid deployment of current technology in the area of freeway operations and traffic management and also an intensive new effort to develop and implement new technologies called GuideSTAR that is Minnesota's part of the national Intelligent Vehicle Highway System (IVHS) effort. A key part of both the traffic management and IVHS efforts is the collection, processing, and dissemination of information to motorists. This paper focuses on the data collection improvements, data analysis improvements, and motorist information improvements.

<div class="htmlview paragraph">This paper reports an analysis of potential costs and revenues to apply road pricing in Melbourne. Objectives of road pricing are assumed to be reduced peak period congestion and raising of funds for transport infrastructure.</div> <div class="htmlview paragraph">The analysis provides a broad understanding of opportunities for Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems (IVHS) to be applied to road pricing; using Melbourne as a test case.</div> <div class="htmlview paragraph">Road pricing can take many forms from simple flat annual charges with fuel consumption based variable charges through to systems which charge vehicle owners according to actual road use.</div> <div class="htmlview paragraph">IVHS developments will be the key to the implementation of socially acceptable systems which charge according to actual use - or a form of charging which partially meets this objective.</div> <div class="htmlview paragraph">As pressure on road funds increases over the next decade, there is likely to be greater emphasis on the use of IVHS technologies to change the way in which road infrastructure is managed.</div>

The spectrum efficiency of cellular radio data networks is maximized by increasing the cell throughput and decreasing the cluster sizes. However, smaller cluster sizes lead to higher cochannel interference and hence lower throughput. A multiple access and collision resolution scheme that accounts for the spatial aspects of cochannel interference is introduced and analyzed for roadside base station to vehicle packet communications in intelligent vehicle highway systems (IVHS). In a wireless network with base stations having full knowledge of neighboring station activity, cochannel interference and destructive collisions are diminished by using discontinuous transmissions and coordination: a base station is silenced (or power-controlled) by a neighboring station in order to improve the latter's chance of successful transmission and decrease retransmission attempts. Interaction among base stations makes efficient use of channel resources for both low- and high-intensity traffic.

Describes the approach of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to gather information and analyze issues relating to the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) of intelligent vehicle highway system (IVHS) Efforts to define the expected electromagnetic environment of the roadway, the frequency/spectrum availability based on geographic area, and system coverage for specific and generic cases are described, together with the ongoing examinations of how the electromagnetic environment of the roadway affects IVHS systems and how IVHS systems affect the electromagnetic environment of the roadway.

Advanced Traffic Management Systems (ATMS) are those components of Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems (IVHS) that integrate traffic detection, communication, and control functions to be responsive to dynamic traffic conditions and increase the efficiency of existing traffic networks. ATMS provide the management foundation that will enable and integrate other IVHS components such as Commercial Vehicle Operations, Advanced Traveler Information Systems, Advanced Vehicle Control Systems, and Advanced Public Transportation Systems. This paper defines Advanced Traffic Management Systems. It also describes the functions that may take place within an ATMS-class Traffic Management Center (TMC), a scenario that a future TMC operator may encounter, and some of the human factors issues that must be addressed in the design of an ATMS-class TMC.

For longitudinal control the automated vehicles in intelligent vehicle highway system (IVHS) require sensors to estimate the relative distance and velocity between vehicles. High data fidelity of these sensors is required to maintain the reliability and safety of the IVHS. In this paper, the authors develop a methodology for validation and fusion of sensory readings obtained from multiple sensors used for tracking automated vehicles and for avoiding objects in its path. The authors introduce tracking models for the various operating states of the automated vehicle, namely vehicle following, maneuvering, i.e. split, merge, lane change, emergencies, and for the lead vehicle in a platoon. The Kalman filtering approach is proposed for the formation of real time validation gates. This along with the algorithmic sensor validation filter is used for sensory data validation. The validated data are then fused by using a Bayesian method called the probabilistic data association filter. The procedure is demonstrated by two examples using simulated data, data obtained from a platooning test set-up.

This brief introduces a fuzzy sensor validation and fusion methodology and applies it to automated vehicle control in Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems (IVHS). Sensor measurements are assigned confidence values through sensor-specific dynamic validation curves. The validation curves attain minima of zero at the boundaries of the validation gate. These in turn are determined by the largest physically possible change a system—in our example vehicles of the IVHS—can undergo in one time step. A fuzzy exponential weighted moving average time series predictor determines the location of the maximum value of the validation curves. Sensor fusion is then performed using a weighted average of sensor readings and confidence values, and—if available—the functionally redundant values calculated from other sensors.