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Intro
Intelligent connected and autonomous vehicles are, perhaps, the most immediately attractive element of the smart mobility evolution, but they won’t solve anything in isolation without equally intelligent road infrastructure in place to support the advanced technology. Intertraffic spoke to three infrastructure experts and asked them for their views on the current state of play and what is exciting them on a daily basis.
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“Today, vehicle automation and connectivity are two of the most attractive and innovative topics in the mobility research field,” he confirms. “Researchers, authorities, industrial icons and the press repeatedly present us with a vision in which Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) have connected functions, by automatically sharing data with other vehicles, for instance through integrated navigation systems, and/or count on driver-autonomous functions, so certain commands are executed by the vehicle itself and without the intervention of a human driver. We are also consequently presented with the notion that this new generation of vehicles promises to bring forward wonders in terms of traffic congestion, safety performance and overall efficiency of the road mobility system.
We are also consequently presented with the notion that this new generation of vehicles promises to bring forward wonders in terms of traffic congestion, safety performance and overall efficiency of the road mobility system.
“But,” he continues, “at the risk of not being in sync with the above trend, I believe that no connected and/or automated mobility is possible without an underlying adapted ‘bricks’ infrastructure and that significant adaptation investments must be made in the latter to form a solid foundation for realistic CAVs roll-out.”
THERE MAY BE TROUBLE AHEAD
Papí has first-hand experience of the potential for CAVs to completely revolutionise our concept of traffic, but he is also keen to stress that the road ahead, as it were, is not as obstacle-free as it might be.
“Our company’s ongoing research activities into CAVs and mixed traffic have clearly shown us that in the long term CAVs allow for a high level of adaptability, for example in the form of intelligent occupancy measures for road infrastructure, real-time management, segregated bus lanes, adaptation to vulnerable user requirements, autonomous buses or parking deterrents. Thanks to recent technological innovations, such as remote sensing, advanced analytics, automated operations, crowdsourcing and integrated scheduling and control, road infrastructure can now be used more effectively, and operated and maintained more efficiently. In short, deploying an integrated transportation ‘info-structure’ relying on V2I [vehicle to infrastructure], I2V [infrastructure to vehicle], V2V [vehicle to vehicle] and I2I [infrastructure to infrastructure] communications can strongly contribute to more robust and efficient road traffic,” he enthuses.
“However,” he warns, “and at the risk of repeating myself, a high degree of vehicle connectivity and automation is not possible without an accompanying connected road infrastructure. In my opinion, overlooking this is overestimating the potential of automation algorithms to properly react to all possible open-traffic parameters and opens the door for serious legal and safety consequences. The adaptation of today’s under-maintained road networks to a ‘connected infrastructure’ would cost European governments trillions of Euros.”
