The American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA) recently concluded their annual Midyear meetings in Williamsburg, Virginia. Their Innovation Council met on August 23^rd. But before the meeting began officially, they held a joint round-table discussion with members of the Automotive Safety Council. The ASC represents manufacturers of automotive safety system components including cameras, LIDAR, radar and other sensors.

The ASC led off by presenting a sort of Automotive Sensors 101 class that explained the different technologies, what they do well, and what they don’t do so well. This was a big help to ATSSA members who must design traffic control devices that these sensors will be able to “see” and react to in the very near future.

Cameras used for lane tracking look out about 500 feet on highways with a viewing angle of 40 to as much as 100 degrees. The viewing distance decreases on city streets while the viewing angle increases. As camera technology improves, they plan to hold the lane keeping range to 150m as there is little benefit to extending it. Instead they will widen the field of view to better detect pedestrians, balls rolling into the street, etc.

Cameras currently see black & white (gray scale) and red. White lane markings are much easier for cameras to see than yellow because white has far better contrast.

The ASC maintained (as we do) that digital maps must be updated in real time. Long term work zones are easy enough to include in digital maps. Short term work zones are more of a problem. And chip seals are the worst as they are short term AND include no pavement markings – just chip seal markers.

As we move from level 3 to 4 and 5 automotive system hardware won’t change much. It will probably decrease in price, but that’s all. Rather the system functionality and human-machine language will be the key differentiators. The algorithms used by the vehicle to decide what is important, what is not, and how the vehicle should react will constantly evolve and improve.

The ASC shared their market forecast for growth in the next few years. In 2020 the first level 5 vehicles will be sold. Level 2 (driver assist) vehicles will total about 13 million vehicles. By 2030 more than 90 million vehicles will have at least level 2 automation and level 5 will total nearly 3 million vehicles. But that means less than 5% of all vehicles on the road in 2030 will be level 5.

There are still very different approaches to level 3 automation. At level 3, vehicles will automatically center in their lanes, follow a route and stop when required. But unexpected conditions, such as work zones, causes the vehicle to return control to the driver. Some manufacturers see level 3 as a step toward levels 4 and 5. But others, especially Google, feel level 3 is dangerous and so will not produce cars requiring human control at any time. Level 3 peaks in 2025 at 2 million vehicles then drops as level 4 and 5 vehicles become more popular and available.

The ASC group told us control will be ceded in work zones. But how that will happen is not clear. Still, they agreed with us on the need for sufficient time for the driver to acclimate before having to make important decisions.

Once the ASC concluded their presentation, Scott McCanna of David Evans & Associates made a presentation from our industry perspective and asked several thought-provoking questions about work zones along the way.

When channelizing devices including cones, drums and delineators are used to redefine a lane, will device spacing become important for automated vehicles? Will we need to maintain some minimal spacing to hold CAVs attention? And what happens when one or two cones are knocked down? Will the automated vehicle become disoriented? Or revert to the old lane markings?

It was further suggested than CAV logic should see drums and cones as a higher priority when choosing a direction of travel than existing pavement markings. Drums, cones, etc. should indicate a change…perhaps one that automatically triggers driver control in the case of Level 3 CAVs.

The time went by very quickly and everyone agreed it was a great first step in building better understanding between our two industries. Future meetings are already planned to build on this and plan for our future.

We just returned from the Automated Vehicle Symposium held annually in San Francisco. It has always been a wonderful venue for the exchange of ideas and concerns about automated vehicles. This year work zones and roadway safety infrastructure continue to make progress in the AV world. In fact, it is remarkable how the conversation has changed in a few short years. Three years ago, we told the automakers what they needed to understand about work zones. It was a major epiphany for them. Last year we offered a way to report work zones in real time. This year the discussion focused on the tools available and how best to use them.

Breakout Session # 32 titled “OEM/DOT Dialog on Dedicated Lanes, Work Zones, and Shared Data” was broken into those three topics. They were all worthwhile but in the interest of time we will focus on the work zone portion here. The focus of the session was real-time reporting of work zones to automated vehicles and digital maps.

Ross Sheckler of iCone started off by describing the tools that will make work zone reporting automatic and accurate – both in terms of location and time.

Paul Pisano of FHWA discussed the connected work zone grant. They are evaluating in-car traffic information. The study runs from May 2017 to March 2019. One of the desired outcomes of the study is to standardize work zone data elements. Every state, every practitioner, etc. has their own list and they have started the discussion of what should be on that list and how it should be formatted so that everyone can report things like work zones in the same way.

They plan to do this in two states: what they called a low-fidelity version and a high-fidelity version. The Low fidelity version will come first and includes the simplest of elements: GPS location, start and end dates, and some description of the work zone such as “right lane closed”. The later, high fidelity version will include detailed lane level mapping and much more.

Bob Brydia of TTI discussed his work with connected work zones on I-35 between Austin and Dallas. He collected data on each and every lane closure – 1,000s of them over the past few years. Each recorded lane closure included 60 fields to describe each closure. That’s a lot! But OEMs have told him they want much, much more!

In a related topic it was pointed out that in the recent federal RFI on connected vehicles, two different US automaker trade associations said they want a universal work zone database! So, we all see the need. Its just a matter of deciding what it should include, as Paul described earlier.

Bob Brydia says they currently send work zone data out as traffic info to help drivers. But eventually this will become more of a traffic operations function. CAVs will use this info to automatically reduce delays and speed travel times.

It was a great session, as always, and we look forward to more dramatic progress next year.

Many thanks to Brian Watson of the American Traffic Safety Services Association for his recent email regarding the FHWA’s efforts to get road users involved in a discussion of the impacts and issues surrounding automated and autonomous vehicles. This is an important opportunity for those of us in work zone ITS to get involved. For that reason we have reprinted his email here:

I recently attended a webinar on the FHWA’s National Dialogue on Highway Automation. I have attached the link to the recorded session, and a background on the FHWA program below. Please note the five automation focus areas include many of the aspects of our industry. If you have any questions, or would like to get involved please let me know. The next meeting will take place in Detroit at ITS America in two weeks.

https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/automationdialogue/index.htm

Background

Automated vehicles have the potential to significantly transform the nation’s roadways. They offer potential benefits in safety but also introduce uncertainty for the agencies responsible for the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of the roadway infrastructure. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is initiating a national conversation with partners and stakeholders to better understand the implications of highway automation to facilitate innovation and inform the Agency’s role in this area. This National Dialogue on Highway Automation represents a series of meetings held across the country to facilitate information sharing, identify key issues and prepare the infrastructure and the broader transportation community to safely and efficiently integrate automated vehicles into the road network. Input received during the National Dialogue will help inform national research, policy, and programs and will aid in the development of a national transportation community for automation.

This National Dialogue will engage an expanded set of stakeholders, beyond FHWA’s typical stakeholders, in order to ensure that this issue has broad input. These stakeholders will include but is not limited to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), technology suppliers, transportation network companies (TNCs), associations, and public-sector partners.

The meetings will be held in different locations across the country, running from June 2018 through the end of 2018. These meetings will be conducted as 1 to 1.5 day events and generally include 100 to 150 participants. These meetings are meant to gather input and information from stakeholders and will include significant interactive components, such as breakout discussions and listening sessions.

Automation Focus Areas

1. Planning and Policy: This focus area will explore relevant issues for the planning and policy community, such as travel demand changes from automation, land use implications, infrastructure funding, right of way use, transportation systems management and operations, automation legislation/policy and other topics.
2. Digital Infrastructure and Data: This focus area will center on the data requirements and needs of automated vehicles (e.g., digital work zone maps, road closures, etc.). It will explore the possibility of developing new partnerships and collaboration between public agencies and industry for data sharing and safety.
3. Freight: This focus area will deal with truck platooning applications and automated truck freight delivery issues. It will cover possible implications on traffic patterns and operations, as well as potential infrastructure considerations.
4. Operations: This focus area will survey the range of operations challenges from highway automation and initiate a discussion on what further research is necessary to address them. These challenges may include incident management and system inefficiency which may have implications on traffic patterns and roadway capacity.
5. Multimodal Safety and Infrastructure Design: This focus area will cover infrastructure requirements, standardization, and consistency for automation. It will highlight topics where automation technology developers and public agencies need collaboration to plan for locations where existing roadway infrastructure, road conditions, design features and environments could lead to potential safety hazards.