Lina Konstantinopoulou, Head of Transport and Logistics at ERTICO, gave a presentation on the Convergence of Connected and Automated Vehicles with Transport Infrastructure at the Webinar on Connected and Automated Vehicles: Evolution or revolution? as part of International Women in Engineering Day on 20 June.
Taking place every year on 23 June, International Women in Engineering Day is a global awareness campaign to raise the profile of women in engineering and celebrate the outstanding achievements of women engineers throughout the world. National Women in Engineering Day was launched in the UK in 2014 by the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) to celebrate its 95th anniversary.
The event has grown over the years, receiving UNESCO patronage in 2016. In 2017, National Women in Engineering Day became an international event to reflect the interest and enthusiasm developed by its growing international audience over several years. International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) now allows the celebration of women in engineering to become global.
Traffic control strategies are currently not able to address individual travellers – but connected and automated driving has the potential to change that. ‘The future of Traffic Management is to build upon the deployment of connected vehicles and travellers in order to achieve convergence of mobility services and traffic management, create synergies between actions of the individual travellers with the collective mobility objectives, and bridge the innovative developments in the vehicle and in the traffic management while giving value to the legacy and creating new business opportunities’ explains Lina Konstantinopoulou.
TM 2.0’s holistic traffic management approach relies on a collection, processing and implementation loop where all information and data from all available sources (navigation systems, the cloud, roadside equipment, etc.) is fed into data processing, permitting the implementation of traffic management solutions involving all means of information channels aimed at informing and guiding the driver: Urban Traffic Control via road-side units, variable message signs, the cloud, and navigation systems.
As automation advances, the whole transport infrastructure management chain will have to get ready to accommodate a mixed fleet of autonomous and human-driven vehicles before automated traffic gradually becomes the norm. This means managing and regulating the flow of automated vehicles, supporting their interactions with their surroundings when needed, improving road safety and traffic efficiency overall. Automated vehicles can benefit in turn from high-level communication, not only with infrastructure and other vehicles, but also with other road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and human drivers. “For this, the whole transport network, cities and highways, has to be prepared to host and inter-link to this new means of transportation” says Lina Konstantinopoulou. Standards will also have to be developed, for instance for communicating intended trajectory or path planning. The visible part of road infrastructure will also have to change to accommodate new traffic signs and road markings, for instance for dynamic lane segregation; as well as virtual bus stops where passengers can be safely dropped off or picked up, smart priorities assignment for unmarked intersections, and algorithms for shockwave damping using speed suggestion messages.
Download Lina Konstantinopoulou’s presentation here: [PDF]
