Abstract
Throughout the history of thinking about highway automation, one of the most vexing problems has always been that of determining how to advance from the present-day manually-controlled vehicles to the future fully automated vehicles. Considerable research attention has been devoted to defining the architecture and operating protocols, as well as the technology, of automated highway systems. Rather less attention has been devoted to defining the steps by which we can get there. This paper identifies targets of opportunity for accelerating progress toward highway automation, taking account of the operational constraints that must be addressed. A general deployment staging sequence is then proposed. (A*)