Cooperative Driving Automation Research for Reliability

Building from current and past Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Cooperative Automation Research Mobility Applications (CARMA) projects (e.g. CARMA Prototype I and II, CARMA TSMO Phases I and II, CARMA IHP, CARMA HIL), the CARMA software suite is becoming a powerful tool to assist researchers in advancing Cooperative Driving Automation (CDA) strategies for new Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) use cases. The CARMA software suite is being developed to be open source using agile software development practices and is hosted on GitHub. It is being used by multiple partners both within the DOT (e.g. FMCSA, MARAD) and external to DOT (e.g. Universities of Cincinnati and Utah) to support light and heavy vehicle testing. Thus, since the CARMA software suite is open source, it is successfully encouraging research collaboration with the goal of understanding the benefits of CDA by partnering with industry, academia, and the public sector. FHWA is pursuing three main research tracks (Traffic, Reliability, and Freight) that support the USDOT CARMA Program which is advancing cooperative driving automation from research to deployment. This specific project is focusing on the Reliability research track. The project will make use of the CARMA software suite by developing and testing new features geared toward addressing non-recurring traffic congestion TSMO use cases on both arterials and highways. Specifically, the CDA features developed in this project will be to improve infrastructure safety and efficiency for the weather, Traffic Incident Management (TIM), and work zone use cases – all uses cases that impact the reliability of the nation’s infrastructure. The focus of these features will be to use infrastructure to inform CDA participants about how to best respond to the non-recurring traffic congestion use case so as to minimize the impact that it has in terms of safety and infrastructure efficiency. For example, in the work zone use case, CARMA Cloud (i.e. the CARMA component that sits in the cloud and monitors the entire traffic network) may inform certain vehicles that they ought to take another route while it could tell other vehicles specifically when they ought to merge out of the lane that is being closed. This would decrease the delay associated with work zones that is caused by the required merging maneuvers. Further, by using CARMA Messenger (i.e. the CARMA component that can be used by any moving entity that is not autonomous, such as a person), construction workers can send out beacons to indicate their working location and decrease the probability of a work zone injury and fatality. In all three use cases (i.e. weather, TIM, and work zones), there are a plethora of various scenarios that will be addressed through the development of new CDA features. In coordination with ITS JPO, NHTSA, FMCSA, and other partners external to the USDOT, this project will be a multi-year effort that will seek to develop these features in order to accelerate early CDA deployment.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • USDOT Research Hub DisplayID 157397

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $45000
• Sponsor Organizations:

  Intelligent Transportation Systems - Joint Program Office

  ,    
• Managing Organizations:

  Federal Highway Administration

  Mclean, VA  United States  22101
• Project Managers:

  Bujanovic, Pavle

• Start Date: 20210601
• Expected Completion Date: 20230403
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: Automation
• Subprogram: Program Support

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Autonomous vehicles; Connected vehicles; Research; Software; Traffic congestion
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Research; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01864205
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Department of Transportation
• Files: RIP, USDOT
• Created Date: Nov 17 2022 11:56AM