Although the concept of roadway automation has been in the public eye for nearly 50 years, and although it has now been 30 years since the first test track demonstrations of some of the requisite technologies, virtually no progress has been made toward implementation.This paper reviews the history of roadway automation development efforts and explains why it is worth re-examining roadway automation now in light of current transportation needs and technological progress. The main body of the paper outlines the technical questions thatneed to be answered in order to make roadway automation a reality, based on the nine functions of an automated roadway system: (a) intelligent traffic signalling; (b) traffic information systems; (c) driver warning and assistance systems; (d) automatic steering control; (e) automatic spacing control; (f) obstacle avoidance; (g) automatictrip routing and scheduling; (h) control of merging of strings of traffic; and (i) transitioning to and from automatic control. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1283, Transportation systems planning and applications 1990.
Abstract