pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

A Research and Coordination Network of CAV Testbeds for Human-Center Technologies and Equitable Mobility in the Pacific Northwest

PI: Jeff Ban (UW), banx@uw.edu, ORCID: 0000-0003-3605-971X

Co PIs: Ahmed Abdel-Rahim (UI), and Jia Li (WSU)

AMOUNT & MATCH: $195,000 from PacTrans; $195,000 Match

PERFORMANCE PERIOD: 8/16/2023 – 8/15/2025

STATUS: Active

CATEGORIES: Connected Autonomous Vehicles, Testbed, Equity

UTC PROJECT DOCUMENTATION:

FINAL PROJECT REPORT: will be available once completed

PROJECT DATA: will be available once completed

DESCRIPTION:  In the last two decades or so, new versions of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) have emerged and are under rapid developments. The field testing of CAVs, however, is still quite limited to this day, mainly for individual vehicles by the industry sector. There is a critical research gap to understand how CAVs interact with human driven vehicle (HDVs) and the connected transportation infrastructure for safer vehicle control, and for the efficiency, sustainability, and equity of the entire transportation system. This requires open CAV testbeds. While CAV testbeds have been built in different parts of the country in the last 5-10 years (e.g., the M-City), they are hard to access / use physically and also costly for many university researchers. In our Pacific Northwest region, despite various plans to build CAV testbeds at several partnering universities, a properly instrumented and working CAV testbed does not exist yet. This severely limits CAV-related research and deployment in the region, for which researchers have to rely on traffic simulation and/or driver simulators, or second-hand data from other testbeds. More importantly, the diverse geography, landscape, population, and economies lead to diverse mobility needs in our region, calling for testbeds with various focuses to address specific local needs of agencies, researchers, and the public. It is thus imperative to build CAV testbeds with different focuses at partnering universities of PacTrans to develop human-centered technologies/methods and for diverse and equitable mobility in the Pacific Northwest.