Automated Vehicles and MaaS

Removing the Barriers

Bob Williams

• Editorial: Wiley-IEEE Press
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119765387
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Biowissenschaften
• Categoría: Systemtheorie

AUTOMATED VEHICLES AND MaaS

A topical overview of the issues facing automated driving systems and Mobility as a Service, identifies the obstacles to implementation and offers potential solutions

Advances in cooperative and automated vehicle (CAV) technologies, cultural and socio-economic shifts, measures to combat climate change, social pressures to reduce road deaths and injuries, and changing attitudes toward self-driving cars, are creating new and exciting mobility scenarios worldwide. However, many obstacles remain and are compounded by the consequences of COVID-19. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) integrates various forms of public and private transport services into a single on-demand mobility service. Combining trains, cars, buses, bicycles, and other forms of transport, MaaS promises a convenient, cost-effective, and eco-friendly alternative to private automobiles.

Automated Vehicles and MaaS: Removing the Barriers is an up-to-date overview of the contemporary challenges facing CAVs and MaaS. Written in a clear and accessible style, this timely volume summarizes recent research studies, describes the evolution of automated driving systems and MaaS, identifies the barriers to their widespread adoption, and proposes potential solutions to overcome and remove these barriers. The text focuses on the claims, realities, politics, new organizational roles, and implementation problems associated with CAVs and MaaS—providing industry professionals, policymakers, planners, administrators, and investors with a clear understanding of the issues facing the introduction of automated driving systems and MaaS. This important guide and reference:

• Provides an overview of recent progress, the current state of the art, and discussion of future objectives
• Presents both technical background and general overview of automated driving systems and MaaS
• Covers political, commercial, and practical issues, as well as technical and research content, yet suitable for non-specialists
• Helps readers make informed decisions and realistic estimates for implementing mobility solutions and new business models for transport services
• Includes an extensive bibliography with direct links to in-depth technical engineering and research information

Automated Vehicles and MaaS: Removing the Barriers is an essential resource for transport providers, vehicle manufacturers, urban and transport planners, students of transportation, vehicle technology, and urban planning, and transport policy and strategy managers, advisors, and reviewers.

1
The Promise and Hype Regarding Automated Driving and MaaS

Figure 1.1 1950s image of highway of the future: Popular Mechanics magazine.

Source: Popular Mechanics magazine.

1.1 The Promise

It is possible that the fully automated car was first seen in a road safety awareness film ‘The Safest Place’ (1935). ‘The vehicle always stays in its lane, never forgets to signal when turning, obeys all stop signs and never overtakes on dangerous corners’ Kröger (2016).

By 1939, at the World's Fair, General Motors ‘Futurama’ featured a model of future transport systems with automated highways in an imagined world of 1960 Weber (2014). Please note with a smile, futurologists usually overestimate the speed of development and uptake of their subject (Figure 1.1).

Advances in computer technology have seen the rapid development of automation over the past 50 years. Combined with innovative engineering, this has led to developments from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs/drones) to armed robotic rovers. The US Armed Forces and DARPA built on the philosophy of ‘development through competition’ based on the early twentieth‐century Orteig Prize (US$25 000) offered in 1919 by French hotelier Raymond Orteig for the first nonstop flight between New York City and Paris that helped prod the development of air flight, and that spurred Charles Lindbergh to make his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. DARPA have sponsored a number of competitions to accelerate the development of everything from automatic weaponry to private sector space flight.

In 2004, DARPA established the ‘Grand Challenge’, a competition designed to encourage the development of technologies needed to create the first fully autonomous ground vehicles.

The first Grand Challenge took place on 13 March 2004 and involved 15 self‐driving ground vehicles navigating a 228 km (142 mi) course across the desert in Primm, Nevada (https://www.wired.com/story/autonomous-car-chaos-2004-darpa-grand-challenge/). The prize was $1 million but the desert course proved to be too hard. No team finished the course, and the prize went unclaimed.

The second event was held on 8 October 2005 in southern Nevada with 5 of the original 195 teams completing the 212 km (132 mi) and the $2 million prize was won by Stanford University.

For the third event, held in November 2007, DARPA extended the challenge to include a mock urban environment. Driving in traffic and typical vehicle manoeuvres and highway crossings were involved. Tartan Racing, a team from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, claimed the $2 million prize with their vehicle ‘Boss’, a converted Chevrolet Tahoe.

Thus the race to the development of automated vehicles kicked off and was incentivised, and its progress has only accelerated thereafter.

* * * * *

We already live in a world where vehicles are to some extent ‘connected’. New model vehicles in Europe have a system called ‘eCall’, which automatically contacts and puts the occupants of the vehicle in touch with the emergency services in the event of an accident. Volvo Assistance, BMW Connected Drive, GM Onstar, Mercedes ‘Me’ and ‘Rescue’ as well as Citroen Assistance are examples of breakdown, emergency and driver support systems that are connected to resources outside of the vehicle, connected by 2G/3G/4G, and soon to be 5G, mobile telephony.

The modern vehicle also ‘connects’ to its environment in many ways, largely through sensors, to assist with the driving experience. Electronic stability control (ESC) is now mandatory on all new cars sold in Europe. Lane‐keeping systems (LKS), adaptive cruise control (ACC), automated emergency braking (AEB), and intelligent speed assistance (ISA) systems are increasingly commonplace, as are automatic headlight dipping, traction control, tyre‐pressure monitoring, etc. It is thought‐provoking to consider that most of what these systems do is to use technology to compensate, to some extent, for human error, often taking some control away from the driver under certain circumstances.

Modern sat‐nav systems download and take into account dynamic congestion and traffic incident information in their route planning, and guidance by sat‐nav providers communicate this data wirelessly to the on‐board sat‐nav system. Researchers and developers are close to the fruition of car‐to‐car and car‐to‐infrastructure communication developments, that will enable a truly ‘connected’ vehicle (‘cooperative ITS’ or ‘C‐ITS’ as it is known in the trade).

Moving beyond such connectivity‐enabled functions, attention has now moved to the often misnomered ‘autonomous’ vehicle that will understand its environment and the requirements of its passengers, and the requirements of the road infrastructure, and operate the vehicle without the assistance of a driver (more correctly called the ‘automated’ vehicle). It will also ‘learn’ to react and adapt to different situations during the entire driving process.

Over the next 10–50 years, the transport sector may expect to undergo a significant change, and potentially, transformation, as connected and automated vehicle technology is introduced.

With the impending take‐up and spread of cooperative ITS (C‐ITS) systems in vehicles, informative features will be complemented by, or evolve, cooperative features that will enable vehicles to interact with each other and with the surrounding infrastructure (i.e. vehicle‐to‐vehicle V2V and vehicle‐to‐infrastructure V2I communication). Full‐scale deployment of C‐ITS enabled vehicles that communicate with other vehicles concerning potentially dangerous situations and communicate with local road infrastructure is expected in the near term, and indeed may be required by regulation (for new vehicles), at least in Europe, by the early 2020s.

Many future projections estimate that by 2025, high automation driving will be available on highways and by 2030 in cities. The EC's Joint Research Centre further forecasts the year 2050 as a realistic timescale for the transition to a future mobility paradigm.

In order to summarise the potential of automated driving, ETSC, the European Transport Safety Council refers to the European Road Transport Research Advisory Council, who have summarised “safety and the potential to reduce accidents caused by human error” is one of the main drivers for higher levels of automated driving. “Automated driving can therefore be considered as a key aspect to support several EU transport policy objectives including road safety”.

Automated and connected vehicles have the easy to understand potential to substantially reduce road accidents, traffic congestion, traffic pollution and energy use, and are therefore seem attractive to and are often encouraged/incentivised by governments. Automated vehicles also promise to increase productivity and comfort and to facilitate a greater inclusion in the mobility of specific groups of individuals such as disabled or elderly. But other projections for instantiation in other paradigms predict the opposite in respect of automated vehicles, i.e. an increase in traffic congestion, an incre...