Research Project

Welcome the audience. The Topic selected for the Dissertation Research project is "The Automated Highway Systems" (referred as AHS). But why? We as humanity need to look forward to smart and sustainable systems that facilitate human growth as well as sustain the work we live in. We need to move forward. Adapt! Accept the change! AHS is one system that has been considered to be the future by many, as a system for our future generations. I wanted to look what are the pros and cons of this system, what significant changes it can bring, its impact and how it will revolutionize the current systems we have…

The issues of severe traffic congestion and environmental pollution from transportation and other constructions have increased manifolds in past decades, especially in developed countries of Europe and America.

Building larger and wider road networks are ceased to be an innovative option to allow traffic flow and control greenhouse gas emissions.

This image shows how the sensors work in an AHS, and how does the overall structure/component look like.  We need to have smart roads, better structure, control systems, detectors etc., as shown here…

Automated Highways (i.e. personal hands-off & Feet-off vehicles operating on conventional roadways) focus on stereo vision-based systems for sensing local environments, dynamic depth mapping, object identification and tracking, road edge identification., robust control in the presence of substantial uncertainty and noise

As shown here, AHS includes completely dedicated transit guiding systems that ensure full automation during the whole travel

This is probably the most important question; How does AHS benefits, all of us? Well, the most prominent impacts include:

• Safety of accidents and enhancement of surface transportation efficiency
• Achievement of national transportation safety goals
• Protection and enhancement of the natural environment and communities affected by surface transportation
• Accommodation of the needs of all users of surface transportation systems
• Improvement of the Nation’s ability to respond to emergencies and natural disasters

This picture summarizes the most fundamental components/teams that make up a complete AHS system. We have different highway administrative teams and operational equipment as sown in this image. This is just to give you an idea of the complexity of such a system.

Now, what do I aim to do in this research? The primary aim of this research is to explore the challenges and factors affecting the designing and implementation of automated highway systems (AHS); Is this system even feasible and sustainable? This impact will be analysed concerning the civil engineering principles and infrastructure of AHS

The primary objectives of this study include…

The primary research question to be addressed in the study are:

The research plan for this study has been divided into 5 distinct steps as shown here…

For the development of AHS, various pathways have been proposed which will be investigated in this research, including:

1. PATH (Partners of Advanced Transit and Highways) research program considers a platoon based on eight cars with a constant separation of 6.5 meters at every point in the speed limit up to full highway speed.

As you can see here, both primary, as well as secondary research, will be completed in this paper. The Secondary data is the data that is already available. The main purpose of using secondary data is the collection of support information for the research. Secondary data was collected through reliable and accurate sources.

Primary data to be collected through surveys of stakeholders including common highway users, civil engineers, transportation consultants, town planners, and other concerned professionals. The interviews of construction and engineering experts in highway design were also conducted to collect insightful information about the challenges and impacts of AHS.

Various challenges that are to be focused on in this research, include the use of sustainable and reusable materials for construction, enhancement in overall efficiency and productivity as well as integration of smart control systems given  AHS systematic control requirements.

Various other issues will be investigated, such as if the reduction in fuel burnt is possible as a consequence of the exclusive platoon configuration for reducing the severity of rapid speed changes and making traffic flow smoother etc.

The practitioners of the industry will be consulted to obtain their views on various parameters such as the integration of information technology to extent that the overall current norms of road construction can be revised and probably the complete method of road construction techniques can be amended.

Various other Challenges of AHS will also be discussed with the practitioners, including:

1. Development and maintenance costs of AHS are subjected to increase with every Km added to the framework. The costs per km are less but will increase for total highway and will cost billions of Euros to the countries like UK, US and other developed regions.

2. Adding costs to individual users due to new hardware, support systems, and other requirements for AHS?

3. The lack of control over travel due to automatically driven cars, psychological troubles and fears in car owners?

4. Issue of the affordability of new vehicles for low-income families to travel on AHS and the up gradation of old vehicles is not given proper consideration in the development of automated transport systems?

Any Questions?