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Development and Testing of Autonomous Vehicle Technology for Transportation Infrastructure Maintenance
Mobile and slow-moving operations, such as striping, sweeping, bridge flushing, and pothole patching, are critical for efficient and safe operation of a highway transportation system. However, reducing hazards for roadway workers and achieving a safer environment for both roadway maintenance operators and the public have been a challenging problem. In 2017 alone, a total of 158,000 total crashes occurred in our nation’s work zones, accounting for 61,000 injuries. The Autonomous Truck Mounted Attenuator (ATMA) vehicle, sometimes referred to as an Autonomous Impact Protection Vehicle (AIPV), offers a promising solution to eliminate injuries to Department of Transportation (DOT) employees.
In this webinar, we will present how to use Autonomous Vehicle technology for work zone maintenance, for the purpose of protecting DOT maintenance workers from potential crashes. We will also present the evaluation methodology for the ATMA system, as well as the field-testing outcomes in Sedalia, MO. We hope this webinar will be helpful for transportation agencies that are interested in deploying similar technologies, or for academic researchers to assess characteristics of autonomous vehicles and to apply knowledge gained in transportation modeling and simulation practices.
About the Presenter
Dr. XB Hu is currently an Assistant Professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Arizona in 2013 and was a founding team member and the Director of R&D at Metropia Inc. at Tucson AZ. His research focuses on smart transportation systems, transportation big data analytics, and traffic flow and system modeling. He is supporting Missouri DOT, Colorado DOT, and a pool-fund with 12 state DOT members to test and deploy autonomous maintenance technology in the United States.