Technology Roadmap, Maturity and Performance: Identification of Technology Issues to Realize Vehicle-Roadway Automation

It is widely acknowledged that deployment of vehicle-highway automation is contingent on market forces technology readiness, but in this chapter we go one step further: what is vehicle-highway automation? One hand, it is described as an evolution of the sensor and perhaps communication technologies available for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) of today. On the other hand, it may be a highly-cooperative system. We therefore qualitatively examine two extreme systems—a free agent or autonomous vehicle and a highly-coordinated or platooning system—in light of six key considerations: (1) influence of operation policies, (2) desirable vehicle following distances, (3) interaction with normal, non-automated traffic, (4) vehicle coordination principles, (5) handling of hazards, and (6) what is expected of the driver (or system supervisor). We pose a series of questions on the practicability or the technology maturity of both these extreme systems. While we note that there may be dogmatic approaches, we instead suggest that these questions be posed as technology maturity litmus cases in system design. We suggest that the systems may initially lie somewhere between the two extreme cases but as (perhaps significant) time progresses, mature to one or both a free agent or platooning concept, and that safe, deployable systems must satisfactorily address these key considerations.