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Gearing up for the Smart Car/Road Revolution

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James A. Bacon
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by James A. Bacon

The automobile industry is undergoing the greatest technological revolution since… well, probably since the invention of the automobile. Cars are getting “smarter,” as in embedded with more powerful sensors and artificial intelligence, and they are getting more connected — with other cars and with roads, which are getting smarter as well. The way people drive 10 years from now will be radically different from the way they drive today, especially if driverless cars become the norm.

Will Virginia be ready? That’s the question I frequently ask on this blog. I don’t know the answer, but I will say this: If Virginia is prepared a decade from now, it will owe a lot to the Connected Vehicle/Infrastructure University Transportation Center, a research consortium supported by Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, the Virginia Department of Transportation and Morgan State University.

Last week the Center strutted its stuff in Northern Virginia, putting on a demonstration of emerging connectivity technologies. Dave Forster has the story for the Virginian-Pilot:

To “connect” the car and the motorcycle, they equipped each with a small antenna and a black boxlike device. That allowed them to talk using what’s known as Dedicated Short Range Communications.

“Think of it as robust roadside Wi-Fi,” said Andrew Petersen, the director of technology development at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. …

Another device …looked like a large Wi-Fi router. …  That was the roadside part of the equation. It sent alerts to the vehicles as they passed, including one for a work zone and another for a stopped vehicle.

VDOT has installed 43 of those devices on a stretch of Interstate 66 and nearby roads close to the Capital Beltway. For researchers, it’s a real-world lab to test and collect data with a fleet of 12 connected vehicles, including four motorcycles, a semitruck and two SUVs.

Technology connecting cars and smart roads will be widely available to the public within five to ten years, researchers predict. The potential exists to make roads a lot safer, and perhaps to squeeze more capacity out of the existing road network.

Right now, the commonwealth is ramping up to spend billions of dollars to address Virginia’s transportation needs based on the assumption that future roads will be as stupid as today’s roads, that the revolution in automobile/infrastructure technology won’t change much of anything. Why? Because transportation funding is driven by a bureaucratic process in which projects inch through endless review and funding hurdles. Once a project enters this pipeline, rarely is it dropped. Projects conceived today, based upon today’s technology and land-use realities, will be extruded through this process a decade or two from now, when the transportation environment will be totally different. It’s depressing to think how many billions of dollars will be mal-invested.

A critical transportation challenge at this juncture is to figure out how to make that approval process more flexible, allowing future administrations to yank projects that no longer make sense and to accelerate projects that do.

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5 responses to “Gearing up for the Smart Car/Road Revolution”

  1. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    The state could save even more money by laying off all the janitors. If Jetsons’ flying cars are on the horizon how far off can robotic maids be?

    Where is our state’s Secretary of Technology? Shouldn’t he be opining on whether robot cars will make new roads unnecessary?

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      Virginia’s Secretary of Technology, once a high-profile position, is almost invisible these days. I remember Don Upson, Eugene Huang and Aneesh Chopra from the previous three administrations but I’d forgotten that we even have such a secretary under McDonnell. But it seems we do. His name is Jim Duffey. It’s true. Google him. He exists.

  2. TMT Avatar
    TMT

    The Tysons Partnership is looking at a system that would provide real-time transportation information first to all buildings and later to mobile devices. The first efforts would be focused on rail and bus information (e.g., the next three Silver Line trains heading to D.C. will arrive at X,Y & Z. Buses A, B & C will arrive at M, N & O). The system would likely be made more robust by including real-time traffic conditions.

    This is all part of the efforts by the Partnership, Fairfax County, VDOT and DRPT to consolidate mandatory TDM efforts into a single Tysons-wide effort and the soon-to-be-completed folding of Tytran into the Partnership.

    I see this an extremely positive development.

  3. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    the technology work flow goes like this:

    R&D -> system engineering -> production

    you don’t want to stop funding R&D…. even “bad looking” ideas
    can turn around overnight if another related technology has a breakthrough.

    No could could even initially conceive of all the spin-offs that have evolved from cell-tower technology – and it’s still spinning off with smartphones and now “smart cars”.

    this is the point where innovation in the marketplace starts to move but it’s not bureaucratic “approvals” that slow things down IMHO.

    It’s at least two other things:

    1. – standards – or the lack of as they are being developed. Go too far out on a limb on a technology with a proprietary approach and you may find someone sawing the limb you sitting on off.

    WiFi is a good example of the turmoil in developing standards.

    Here’s another as an example: Lightsquared with a truly innovated approach:

    ” LightSquared is a company that seeks to develop a wholesale 4G LTE wireless broadband communications network integrated with satellite coverage across the United States using a block of frequencies located near the band used by the Global Positioning System (GPS). However, the issue of interference (using high-powered ground transmitters in spectrum intended for low-powered signals from satellites) has caused problems.”

    so this company wanted to enable phones that would talk to cell towers when available and to satellites when not – for a seamless “connected” environment.

    that would enable “connected” cars – anywhere whether on an urban interstate or rural wyoming or anywhere.

    so it’s not just “approvals” that’s the problem – it’s standards not yet worked out or agreed to not only by the govt but by industry.

    I have serious doubts that we are going to see truly autonomous cars on interstates especially urban interstates – in our lifetime.

    GOOGLE and others have provide a proof-of-concept with vehicles that are relatively slow moving and still prone to problems. My guess is that we’re going to see actual use of autonomous vehicles in applications not on public roads anytime soon.

    You would think, for instance, that a prime place where you could get rid of a human would be with rail – to have autonomous trains – on dedicated fixed-guideways but that ain’t happening…. as far as I know.

    I do not think we’re going to see this until it’s proven to work in environments where one vehicle (like a train) can operate autonomously without killing people – at crossings, etc and I suspect for the first few years it will work like the autopilot now works in a cockpit.

    Now the other reason – if gov has a role to play – it’s ain’t going to happen with the current crop of elected who lean tea pot… just not going to happen.

  4. reed fawell III Avatar
    reed fawell III

    All this holds great potential. But far too often we forget to use it to attack the root of the problem – the distance between and efficient mix of uses.

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