A Brave New World?
December 21st, 2009
Almost 50 years since R&D work on vehicle automation began, concepts, acronyms, and research programs have come and gone, but thanks to recent advances in information processing, sensors and communication technologies we could, at last, soon see widespread implementation of this technology. Tom Voge looks at the historical developments, current trends and future outlook of automated vehicles. Many urban planning issues, including the separation of working and living, out-of-town developments and urban sprawl have led to a strong private car dependency in urban areas, which in turn have led to the degradation of urban environments through congestion, parked cars, community severance, noise and pollution and to social exclusion. The issue of social exclusion will become even more important with the increasing ageing of society. Various improvements to the quality and concept of public transport have helped address some of these issues, but many real or perceived disadvantages of public transport often still leave the private car as the preferred mode. Therefore without any major restrictions to private car use (e.g. due to policy measures, or as response to natural disasters) only a step change in the provision of public transport will be able to change this situation. A step change in public transport One option to radically improve public transport that has been suggested is the introduction of automated transport systems (ATS), which have the potential to combine most of the advantages of private cars (e.g. flexibility, convenience, and comfort) with the advantages of conventional public transport (e.g. sustainability, environmental impacts, and cost), but at the same time being able to avoid most of their disadvantages. ATS have the potentials of using the existing road network and allowing interaction with other users (i.e. conventional manually driven vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians), and therefore do not require any costly rail infrastructure. System design and implementation for this is based on recent advances in sensor and information processing technologies, including vehicle guidance, vision systems and obstacle detection and avoidance. Potential of (and for) automated Transport The system will not require extensive parking spaces and can operate very quietly and without generating pollutants at the point of operation using electric engines. Through traffic management and platooning technology (vehicle following at minimum distance), congestion will be decreased because of a higher capacity of the existing road network. furthermore, automated vehicle control will also result in reduced emissions and increased traffic safety, making ATS a more sustainable mode of urban transport. On a small scale some targeted ATS applications with road capabilities, e.g. the ParkingHopper (in operation 1997-2002) on the long-stay car park at Shiphol Airport in Amsterdam or the ParkShuttle (in operation since 1998) at the Rivium business park near Rotterdam, have proven their ability to operate safely and efficiently in a contained environment with some interaction with pedestrians and other conventional vehicles. A similar system is also currently being implemented at London’s Heathrow airport. » view document
« Back to the news overview