May 2002
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May 2002 |
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ITSA 2002
Retrospective -- This Year's Show Hot on Highways, Cool on Vehicles The tribes gathered once again for one of the biggest Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) events of the year – the 12th annual ITS America Annual Meeting. This year's conference and full exposition took place at the Long Beach, California convention center during the last week of April, and IVsource was there ... looking (harder than we expected) to find showcased examples of intelligent vehicles. |
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The tribes gathered once again last week for one of the biggest Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) events of the year – the ITS America Annual Meeting, the 12th such event since its humble beginnings in 1991. The conference and full exposition, held during the week of April 28 – May 2, marked its evolution by returning to the site of the first such conference -- the Long Beach, California convention center. Not Our Show Anymore? There was plenty of action at the show, both for industry networking and picking up technical content, but for intelligent vehicle types, the funny feeling kept showing up that this is “not our show anymore.” ITS America, and ITS in general, has been a smashing success over the last ten years in getting electronics and software into the day-to-day operation of our nation’s highways – so much so that the ITS America exhibition hall was chock full of such gizmos. When walking through corridors filled with changeable message sign technology, traffic surveillance systems, LED traffic signals and more, the memories of the days when General Motors, Delco, and others also graced these halls seemed distant indeed. The telematics gang, relative newcomers to
the party, were the one exception to the highway emphasis -- their main emphasis
is on getting traffic information to drivers while driving. Yet, they are
essentially consumers and packagers of the information gleaned from the highway
side. Advanced forms of telematics,
in which information is exchanged between vehicles to enhance the performance of
vehicle systems, does not appear to be even on their radar screen. Committee Structure Re-organized Nevertheless, ITS America remains a key forum where government and industry can come together to examine the role of vehicle systems in the safety and traffic flow equations. The vehicle industry doesn’t really need an ITS America in order to introduce new products, but they do want a strong relationship with the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) in order to maintain the flow of government research dollars to support key R&D initiatives. During the show, there was ample time for government leaders and vehicle industry representatives to discuss future directions for the industry. The formal venue for this has been the Advanced Vehicle Control and Safety Systems (AVCSS) Committee of ITS America – which held its last meeting at the conference. The most notable development this year was the complete reorganization of the entire committee structure of the society. Standing committees such as AVCSS will be replaced with six Stakeholder Forums and four technically-oriented Programs. IV safety applications would fall into the Automotive, Telecom, and Consumer Electronics stakeholder forum, and IV applications for traffic flow improvements would belong to the Highway Planning and Operations forum. On the Programs side, there are both Infrastructure Programs and Vehicle Programs, and IV activity would fall into both of these, and bridge them in some cases. See the diagram below for the total picture.
New ITSA Committee Structure
AVCSS committee members agreed on the need for Special Interest Groups in the areas of Vehicle Safety and Traffic Flow Improvement. Much discussion was needed to explore how the overall interests of the committee members would fit into the new structure, and Steve Kuciemba, ITS America's vice president, freely admitted that only general answers are available at this point, as the new structure will require some time to mature. A key intent of the new structure is to provide a framework for the implementation of the ITS Ten Year Plan, published earlier this year by ITS America. IVI Operational Tests Show Results Although the vehicle-oriented content was dwarfed by the highway side, there were several very useful IV technical sessions at the conference -- six sessions on human factors and the USDOT Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI). An IVI update provided a first glimpse at evaluation results from the heavy truck operational tests now underway, with the majority of significant results stemming from the Freightliner testing of their Rollover Stability Advisor/ Controller. Data showed that, over the approximately 200,000 miles traversed by the Freightliner test fleet of six vehicles, the control system applied the engine brake 22 times in order to prevent a rollover (about once every 10,000 miles). Also, Robert Ferlis of the USDOT's Federal Highway Administration noted new research they are conducting in providing centimeter-level satellite positioning, via the National Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) network – work that has attracted the attention of the automotive industry for its potential to enhance the performance of active safety systems. A major session on collision avoidance systems was devoted to the joint GM-NHTSA Advanced Collision Avoidance Systems project, a $35M effort that has reached the halfway mark – system development and testing is complete and operational testing with a small fleet of vehicles will begin this year. NHTSA project manager Jack Ference noted that key technical reports from the project will be available later in May. A Blueprint for Floating Car Data “Megasessions” at the show addressed ITS and Homeland Security, and also ITS and the 'Transportation Infostructure.' This latter session, focused on the challenge of gathering comprehensive real-time data about the performance of the traffic network, provided some insight into the role of the vehicle in data collection. An ongoing debate has been underway between those who see roadside equipment as the key source of such data, and those who believe the best way to collect data is from the vehicles themselves (floating car data). Christine Johnson, Director of USDOT’s Joint Program Office for ITS, bottom-lined the issues:
At the same session, a representative from Ford’s
Manufacturing and Vehicle Design Research Laboratory provided a rambling
tour of Ford’s smart vehicle activities, leaving the impression that they are
doing a little bit of everything. However,
he failed to tie their work very directly to the interests of
the ITS America community. Stop Taxing Truck Safety! On the truck side, safety and security were
noted as top priorities of the truck manufacturers by Skip Yeakel of
Volvo Trucks North America in a
session devoted to this topic. He
called for another round of truck-focused field operational testing to be
initiated, which would include studies of vehicle-vehicle communications,
vehicle-roadside communications, human factors investigations, and driver vision
enhancement technology. Mr. Yeakel
once again sounded the call to repeal the 12% federal excise tax that is
applied to safety technology on trucks, saying that it is an outmoded tax that
does not serve the public good. On
the federal side, Gary Maring, Director of the FHWA Office of Freight
Management and Operations, spoke to the importance of tax incentives to spur
technology deployment. Future Visions One of the “meatiest” sessions, organized by Steve Lockwood of PB Farradyne, was titled “The ITS Vision: Technology, Markets, and Society’s Needs.” Notwithstanding the participation of your IVsource editor as a panelist, many felt this to be a high quality session recalling the “olden days” of ITS, as significant issues were raised by the panelists, followed by solid dialogue with the audience. Dr. Steven Shladover of California PATH discussed the need for better utilization of the highways through automation and called for a return to more visionary thinking in this regard. Chris Wilson of DaimlerChrysler addressed the steadily increasing intelligence in cars, driven by the consumer market’s demands, moving towards advanced forms of driver support and automation. Richard Bishop of Bishop Consulting chose to speak about the opportunity now before us, to harness this vehicle intelligence with the road operators to provide smart systems in the near term in which traffic flow can be enhanced. (All three presentations are posted in the IVsource Reading Room.) Congestion is Back – Adding Vehicle Control to the Toolbox Along these lines, a ray of hope was noted in a session on the future of the ITS Program, in which Jeff Paniati, ITS Program Manager in the USDOT ITS Joint Program Office, noted that “congestion is back” and that he envisions a resurgence in R&D focused on applications of vehicle control and cooperative vehicle-highway systems to enhance traffic flow. His comments referred to the potential for light vehicle systems, heavy trucks, and transit buses to each make contributions to this goal. Mr. Paniati’s comments were within the larger context of “reauthorization,” referring to action expected from the US Congress next year in re-authorizing the surface transportation program, laying out the goals, priorities, and activities for USDOT’s ITS program during 2004 – 2008. Many noted that the recent establishment of an “ITS Caucus” within Congress is a promising sign for healthy funding of the ITS program in this new legislation. Intelligent Vehicles Promise to Take Center Stage at Next Year’s Meeting Look for a substantial set of vehicle demonstrations at next year’s ITS America Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May 2003 – the Intelligent Vehicle Laboratory at the University of Minnesota is organizing this demo. Led by Dr. Max Donath, they are actively seeking participants. Interested? Contact Dr. Donath at donath@me.umn.edu. [Top] ... see the ITS America web site at www.itsa.org. [Top]
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Copyright 2002: IVsource.net and Richard Bishop Consulting (RBC). All Rights Reserved. |
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May 2002 |
