Dawn of autonomous vehicles: review and challenges ahead

This paper reviews the state of the art on autonomous vehicles as of 2017, including their impact at socio-economic, energy, safety, congestion and land-use levels. This impact study focuses on the issues that are common denominators and are bound to arise independently of regional factors, such as (but not restricted to) change to vehicle ownership patterns and driver behaviour, opportunities for energy and emissions savings, potential for accident reduction and lower insurance costs, and requalification of urban areas previously assigned to parking. The challenges that lie ahead for carmakers, law and policy makers are also explored, with an emphasis on how these challenges affect the urban infrastructure and issues they create for municipal planners and decision makers. The paper concludes with strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis that integrates and relates all these aspects.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Big Data and the Internet of Things

Advances in sensing and computing capabilities are making it possible to embed increasing computing power in small devices. This has enabled the sensing devices not just to passively capture data at very high resolution but also to take sophisticated actions in response. Combined with advances in communication, this is resulting in an ecosystem of highly interconnected devices referred to as the Internet of Things - IoT. In conjunction, the advances in machine learning have allowed building models on this ever increasing amounts of data. Consequently, devices all the way from heavy assets such as aircraft engines to wearables such as health monitors can all now not only generate massive amounts of data but can draw back on aggregate analytics to "improve" their performance over time. Big data analytics has been identified as a key enabler for the IoT. In this chapter, we discuss various avenues of the IoT where big data analytics either is already making a significant impact or is on the cusp of doing so. We also discuss social implications and areas of concern.Comment: 33 pages. draft of upcoming book chapter in Japkowicz and Stefanowski (eds.) Big Data Analysis: New algorithms for a new society, Springer Series on Studies in Big Data, to appea

Transportation network companies as cost reduction strategies for paratransit

Paratransit service is an auxiliary type of public transportation provided for people with disabilities and older adults. Federal ADA regulations require all transit agencies receiving federal funding to provide paratransit service, but the per trip cost to transit operators is extremely expensive. Many transit agencies are looking for ways to reduce costs without limiting services. For many agencies, this results in providing the minimum services as required by ADA regulations. However, Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) has taken a different approach to cost reduction by entering into one of the first partnerships with transportation network companies. In September 2016, MBTA’s paratransit service, The Ride, began a partnership with both Uber and Lyft as a cost reduction strategy for paratransit provision. Since the beginning of the partnership, MBTA has been able to reduce costs of providing paratransit while maintaining the same level of service. This report will examine the benefits and limitations of such partnerships between transit agencies and transportation network companies, using MBTA’s The Ride partnership as an example for potentially successful partnerships throughout the United States.Community and Regional Plannin

MultiNet: Multi-Modal Multi-Task Learning for Autonomous Driving

Autonomous driving requires operation in different behavioral modes ranging from lane following and intersection crossing to turning and stopping. However, most existing deep learning approaches to autonomous driving do not consider the behavioral mode in the training strategy. This paper describes a technique for learning multiple distinct behavioral modes in a single deep neural network through the use of multi-modal multi-task learning. We study the effectiveness of this approach, denoted MultiNet, using self-driving model cars for driving in unstructured environments such as sidewalks and unpaved roads. Using labeled data from over one hundred hours of driving our fleet of 1/10th scale model cars, we trained different neural networks to predict the steering angle and driving speed of the vehicle in different behavioral modes. We show that in each case, MultiNet networks outperform networks trained on individual modes while using a fraction of the total number of parameters.Comment: Published in IEEE WACV 201

Understanding consumer demand for new transport technologies and services, and implications for the future of mobility

The transport sector is witnessing unprecedented levels of disruption. Privately owned cars that operate on internal combustion engines have been the dominant modes of passenger transport for much of the last century. However, recent advances in transport technologies and services, such as the development of autonomous vehicles, the emergence of shared mobility services, and the commercialization of alternative fuel vehicle technologies, promise to revolutionise how humans travel. The implications are profound: some have predicted the end of private car dependent Western societies, others have portended greater suburbanization than has ever been observed before. If transport systems are to fulfil current and future needs of different subpopulations, and satisfy short and long-term societal objectives, it is imperative that we comprehend the many factors that shape individual behaviour. This chapter introduces the technologies and services most likely to disrupt prevailing practices in the transport sector. We review past studies that have examined current and future demand for these new technologies and services, and their likely short and long-term impacts on extant mobility patterns. We conclude with a summary of what these new technologies and services might mean for the future of mobility.Comment: 15 pages, 0 figures, book chapte

A Distributed and Privacy-Aware Speed Advisory System for Optimising Conventional and Electric Vehicles Networks

One of the key ideas to make Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) work effectively is to deploy advanced communication and cooperative control technologies among the vehicles and road infrastructures. In this spirit, we propose a consensus-based distributed speed advisory system that optimally determines a recommended common speed for a given area in order that the group emissions, or group battery consumptions, are minimised. Our algorithms achieve this in a privacy-aware manner; namely, individual vehicles do not reveal in-vehicle information to other vehicles or to infrastructure. A mobility simulator is used to illustrate the efficacy of the algorithm, and hardware-in-the-loop tests involving a real vehicle are given to illustrate user acceptability and ease of the deployment.Comment: This is a journal paper based on the conference paper "Highway speed limits, optimised consensus, and intelligent speed advisory systems" presented at the 3rd International Conference on Connected Vehicles and Expo (ICCVE 2014) in November 2014. This is the revised version of the paper recently submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems for publicatio

Hydrogen: tomorrow's fuel or just hot air? The Icelandic Experience

Hydrogen is once again in the limelight, with rising fuel prices, the search for fuels beyond petrol and diesel is being debated even more hotly. The European fuel cell bus trial has been extended by one year and there has been much talk about the potential for hydrogen powered vehicles working during the London Olympics. These would bring even more people into contact with future fuels on perhaps boats and buses. The Department for Transport (UK) has also announced a major call for more research on hydrogen, clearly indicating a focus on both vehicles and infrastructure. So what is all the hype about this fuel and what does it mean for transport engineers in general? This article tries to address some of those issues by trying to understand hydrogen, and then by looking at how the Icelanders have used this remarkable fuel. There may be some meaningful lessons for the UK and other countries interested in implementing hydrogen

Bexley report: a report to MCCH on a suitable transport policy for its Bexley services

This report presents the findings of and recommendations from the study commissioned by MCCH to advise on a comprehensive transport policy for MCCH to use in providing services in both its residential homes and day-care centres in Bexley. It describes the current positions of transport supply for, and of transport demand by the community of people with learning difficulties in the London Borough of Bexley. It also considers the extent to which the transport supply is meeting or not meeting the transport demands and the expressed needs of the people and/or their representatives. The report considers the implications for improvement in transport provision of certain proposed actions by MCCH. Finally, the report presents some recommendations based on a user-centred strategy to help MCCH incorporate their concept of empowering their service users through suitable transport provision. This study has been conducted with the ethos and operational objectives of the MCCH group firmly in mind. MCCH has an objective to enhance quality of life for their service users and is very concerned with ensuring that its service users are enabled to exercise the rights and opportunities of citizenship with particular reference to freedom of choice in time and mode of travel. MCCH holds that real improvement in services to learning disability people must include increased range and choice of people-centred opportunities that address the total needs and aspirations of service users and their carers, underpinned by values and principles of good practice. Thus MCCH desires to put back in the control of users, the lever of decision making as regards services provided to 4 them and intends to do this by actively eliciting user/stakeholders involvement in decision-making. Contrary to the standard social service transport provision style, MCCH desires to create choice for service-users, feeling that people should be able to decide whether, e.g. to go by bus or train and be supported in their decision and not be constrained by the schedule of the provided transport. The specific terms of reference for this study are 1. To examine the current demand for, and provision of, transport within MCCH’s Bexley services. To assess how best these services might be reconfigured and managed, having regard to: · Desire to increase empowerment and choice for service users · Optimizing the integration of the transport management in Bexley within MCCH’s organization, in the light of most efficient use of resources and practice elsewhere in MCCH · Desire to better integrate residential services with day services in Bexley · MCCH’s intention to reconfigure Bexley day services · The move of service users towards ‘supported living’ as opposed to registered care · The objectives and concerns of all parties involved, including Bexley Social Services, Bexley Transport Services, the parents/relatives/carers of the service users and the service users themselves · The way vehicles are currently owned and funded · Efficiency and cost 2. To produce outline proposals, plans and specifications of how a reconfigured transport service would look and operate, including details of resource requirements in enough detail to allow reasonably accurate costing to be derived