The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) was well represented at this year’s Automated Vehicles Symposium held July 19–20 in San Francisco. Researchers from across the Institute helped organize breakout sessions on topics such as truck platooning, ways to shape policy, physical infrastructure and traffic flow.
Over 1,200 people attended this year’s symposium, making it one of the largest gatherings in the world of professionals involved in automated vehicle research. The symposium was co-sponsored by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
“TTI’s significant involvement in TRB translated into our significant role in the Automated Vehicles Symposium,” explained TTI Assistant Agency Director and Connected Automated Transportation Research Lead Christopher Poe. “TTI has several TRB committee members and chairs, and one of the primary activities of the symposium is providing breakout time for the TRB committees to determine the current state of the practice, future direction and research needs.”
According to the conference website, 25 countries and 40 states were represented, and 18 percent were international attendees. More than 20 speakers and 22 breakout sessions covered all aspects of automated vehicle research.
“A central theme that permeated TRB AVS16 was the need to consider the driver as a critical element contributing to safety within an automated vehicle environment,” said TTI Human Factors Program Manager Michael Manser. “The driver, vehicle and infrastructure form a close partnership to ensure overall levels of safety are maintained.”
TTI Senior Research Engineer Paul Carlson moderated the Physical Infrastructure Breakout Session and has been involved in the symposium since its inception.
“This is TRB’s second largest conference of the year (behind annual meetings),” said Carlson. “Attendance increased by nearly 50 percent from last year, and it is becoming an important conference where industry, academia and government come together to talk about research and deployment of automated vehicles.”