Connected vehicles are the future of transportation, potentially enhancing traffic safety and improving driverless car navigation. That’s why a dozen senior engineering students at Gonzaga University are lucky to be gaining hands-on research experience with these evolving technologies.
Autonomous and connected vehicles are both capable of operating with or without a driver, but the difference between them is that autonomous vehicles need not be connected to other vehicles.
In contrast, connected vehicles gather data constantly, sharing it with other connected vehicles and local infrastructure.
The research project provides the opportunity for the students to contribute to the rapidly changing automotive transportation field. The research funding comes from two federal grants involving Rhonda Young, associate professor of civil engineering in Gonzaga’s School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Young is a traffic engineer and manages a USD $7-million Department of Transportation-funded connected vehicle project in Wyoming. Gonzaga is also one of seven universities that will collaborate in a $14-million, five-year DOT grant project being led by the University of Washington, which intends to work toward improving the mobility of people and goods across the Pacific Northwest.
The new grant provides Gonzaga with an additional $10,000 per year for five years, which will enable an additional four to eight students to become involved in the research through summer experiences as well as their traditional senior projects each year. These projects provide students with important opportunities to gain the experience and knowledge they will need in their future engineering careers.
The first phase of the Wyoming project worked to determine the type of connected vehicle technology to deploy, the number of vehicles to be involved and the optimal software systems to run the program. In its current second phase, the DOT project will develop connected vehicle systems and install equipment. Two four-member civil engineering student teams, and one team of four computer engineering students, are working with Young to gather data and create baseline statistics.
Phase three of the research, which will continue through 2019, will include the Gonzaga students’ research. This phase will see the implementation of connected vehicle technology, comparing data on crash rates, vehicle speeds and driver behavior statistics to determine the extent to which connected vehicles impact traffic safety.
“Once you implement this connected vehicle technology, you want to see how much it reduces dangers,” said Christian Rodriguez, one of the civil engineering students involved in the project.
The second civil engineering team will collect speed and road operations data to create a baseline speed for the team to compare with the data generated when the connected vehicle program begins in 2018.
“They’ll be able to determine if implementing connected vehicles was successful in reducing danger to drivers,” said Lea Stanley, another engineering student involved in the research.
“Connected vehicles are constantly seeing road surface conditions and sharing information via short-range frequency of about 1,500 feet,” said Young. She noted that safety and an associated reduction in financial losses from accident-related road closures may be the biggest short-term benefits of connected vehicles.
“Connected vehicles will generate safety messages, and communicate when cars’ airbags deploy, or when ABS (anti-lock braking) systems kick in,” Young added.
During winter white-out conditions, for example, timely vehicle-to-vehicle information is expected to save lives and reduce road closures. In one recent 11-month period, the Wyoming DOT estimated that $773 million in losses are due to crash-induced road closures.
There are also other benefits to the widespread use of connected vehicles, such as alleviating traffic congestion, improving transit accessibility, enhancing trip-planning and offering better options for rural transportation.
The researchers will also consider how to utilize the data generated by connected vehicles, and what other major challenges transportation engineers will face in the areas of technology, communication protocol, system architecture and security.
“I think it’s exciting and daunting at this time,” Young said. “I came from a research background getting undergraduate students involved. We teach them ways to approach these problems, but tell them they will all have to be adaptive because the technology is changing so quickly.”
As the race to develop and market driverless cars accelerates, the government is also working to advance connected vehicle technology. Beginning in 2018, all new vehicles sold in the United States must be able to transmit data to other vehicles and connection sites.
Young believes transportation in the coming decades will be composed of a mix of connected and non-connected vehicles. She also expects that society will quickly adapt to driverless cars, in the same vein as the adaptation to color televisions and smart phones. She anticipates a future without the need for traffic signals, as well, because self-driving vehicles will be programmed with a destination and assignment to drive through an intersection.
To learn more about autonomous vehicles and the future of transportation, check out our articles on The Road to Driverless Cars: 1925-2025 and What Tech Will It Take to Put Self-Driving Cars on the Road?