Impacts of automated vehicles on travel behaviour and land use: an international review of modelling studies

ABSTRACT

Automated vehicles (AVs) could completely change mobility in the coming years and decades. As AVs are still under development and gathering empirical data for further analysis is not yet possible, existing studies mainly applied models and simulations to assess their impact. This paper provides a comprehensive review of modelling studies investigating the impacts of AVs on travel behaviour and land use. It shows that AVs are mostly found to increase vehicle miles travelled and reduce public transport and slow modes share. This particularly applies to private AVs, which are also leading to a more dispersed urban growth pattern. Shared automated vehicle fleets, conversely, could have positive impacts, including reducing the overall number of vehicles and parking spaces. Moreover, if it is assumed that automation would make the public transport system more efficient, AVs could lead to a favouring of urbanisation processes. However, results are very sensitive to model assumptions which are still very uncertain (e.g. the perception of time in AVs) and more research to gain further insight should have priority in future research as well as the development of the models and their further adaptation to AVs.     

The allocation problem of electric car-sharing system: A data-driven approach

Car-sharing is an emerging transportation mode with increasing applications of electric vehicles (EVs). One of the important issues for one-way electric car-sharing systems (ECS) is unbalanced vehicle distributions and high relocation costs. To improve its efficiency and overall profit, this research proposes a data-driven optimization model with the consideration of demand uncertainty. Firstly, a large amount of historical order data from an ECS company are analyzed to characterize the dynamics of the vehicles and the behavioral features of the users. An important observation is that the daily demand by users, i.e., pick-ups, follows Poisson distribution; and the arrival rates vary across time exhibiting four major temporal stages. Based on this observation, this research constructs the ECS reallocation problem as a data-driven optimization model which is a combination of a probability expectation model and a linear programming problem with real-time data as input. More importantly, different from existing research, this research formulates the profit as the mathematical expectation of a discrete random variable with uncertain consumer demands. This allows for a comprehensive consideration of all possible future demands. Furthermore, driving range constraint has been considered in the proposed model as EV is the focus of this paper. A linear solution method is proposed to obtain the global optimal. At the end, the model is validated using real data from 30 ECS stations. The results indicate the daily improvement of profit could be as high as 19.05% with an average of 10.16%.     

Longer and heavier vehicles in Belgium: A threat for the intermodal sector?

To achieve transport cost reductions and to reduce the environmental impact of road transport, different European countries are allowing or testing longer and heavier vehicles on their road network. In Belgium, the Flanders region started a trial in 2015 allowing a limited number of longer and heavier vehicles on a selection of approved routes. A concern among intermodal operators is however that an allowance of longer and heavier vehicles could trigger a reverse modal shift away from rail and inland waterways container transport. Starting from experiences in other European countries, this paper discusses the potential spatial impact of allowing longer and heavier vehicles on the market areas of intermodal transhipment terminals using a geographic information systems-based location analysis model. In a second step, external transport costs are incorporated in this model, to quantify the spatially diversified societal costs of a potential reverse modal shift.     

A tube-based robust nonlinear predictive control approach to semiautonomous ground vehicles

This paper proposes a robust control framework for lane-keeping and obstacle avoidance of semiautonomous ground vehicles. It presents a systematic way of enforcing robustness during the MPC design stage. A robust nonlinear model predictive controller (RNMPC) is used to help the driver navigating the vehicle in order to avoid obstacles and track the road centre line. A force-input nonlinear bicycle vehicle model is developed and used in the RNMPC control design. A robust invariant set is used in the RNMPC design to guarantee that state and input constraints are satisfied in the presence of disturbances and model error. Simulations and experiments on a vehicle show the effectiveness of the proposed framework.     

Dynamic modelling and experimental validation of three wheeled tilting vehicles

The present paper describes the study of the stability in the straight running of a three-wheeled tilting vehicle for urban and sub-urban mobility. The analysis was carried out by developing a multibody model in the Matlab/SimulinkSimMechanics environment. An Adams-Motorcycle model and an equivalent analytical model were developed for the cross-validation and for highlighting the similarities with the lateral dynamics of motorcycles. Field tests were carried out to validate the model and identify some critical parameters, such as the damping on the steering system. The stability analysis demonstrates that the lateral dynamic motions are characterised by vibration modes that are similar to that of a motorcycle. Additionally, it shows that the wobble mode is significantly affected by the castor trail, whereas it is only slightly affected by the dynamics of the front suspension. For the present case study, the frame compliance also has no influence on the weave and wobble.     

省域公路网治安卡口机动车缉查系统研究

为提升公安机关对全省公路网在途机动车的监控能力,提出建立省域公路网机动车查缉布控系统,对系统的网络结构、功能结构、交换结构及核心服务模块等进行了设计,并从应用层面对应用模式及警务机制提出了工作建议。     

高速无舵翼水下机器人运动控制研究

通过改进传统水下机器人体系结构中的执行层、控制层和感知层,提出了无舵翼水下机器人的运动控制系统,使得水下机器人的运动控制系统在保持原有精确定位的功能外,也能完成远距离高速航行等任务.具体的改变包括执行层中的推进器布置方式以及推力分配方案、控制层中的控制方法以及在感知层中加入局部目标规划器,这些改变解决了高速航行给无舵翼水下机器人带来的一系列问题.海上进行的对比试验和远距离长航试验,验证了无舵翼水下机器人在所提出的运动控制系统控制下是可以满足任务要求的.     

四元数法在AUV六自由度仿真中的应用

AUV六自由度仿真几乎无一例外都是基于欧拉角方法来求解运动微分方程,这种方法可以很直观地得到AUV的位置和姿态角,不过在纵倾角±90°的情况下会产生奇异点,使仿真无法进行下去.为克服上述不足,采用了四元数法取代欧拉法.仿真结果表明,四元数法可以进行任意角度的仿真.     

基于图像匹配的无人机目标定位方法

利用无人机的侦察图像对目标进行精确定位的过程中,针对无人机图像与基准图像不可避免地存在尺度变化、旋转变化和光照变化,提出了一种改进SIFT的图像匹配方法。在特征点匹配时,采用简单的准欧式距离作为相似度量准则,并按照DoG空间结构由粗至精进行匹配。实验结果表明,该方法可以实现图像之间的精确匹配,对噪声、光照变化和局部场景变化具有较强的鲁棒性和实时性,为无人机目标定位提供了一种可行和有效的手段。     

Fuel economy testing of autonomous vehicles

Environmental pollution and energy use in the light-duty transportation sector are currently regulated through fuel economy and emissions standards, which typically assess quantity of pollutants emitted and volume of fuel used per distance driven. In the United States, fuel economy testing consists of a vehicle on a treadmill, while a trained driver follows a fixed drive cycle. By design, the current standardized fuel economy testing system neglects differences in how individuals drive their vehicles on the road. As autonomous vehicle (AV) technology is introduced, more aspects of driving are shifted into functions of decisions made by the vehicle, rather than the human driver. Yet the current fuel economy testing procedure does not have a mechanism to evaluate the impacts of AV technology on fuel economy ratings, and subsequent regulations such as Corporate Average Fuel Economy targets. This paper develops a method to incorporate the impacts of AV technology within the bounds of current fuel economy test, and simulates a range of automated following drive cycles to estimate changes in fuel economy. The results show that AV following algorithms designed without considering efficiency can degrade fuel economy by up to 3%, while efficiency-focused control strategies may equal or slightly exceed the existing EPA fuel economy test results, by up to 10%. This suggests the need for a new near-term approach in fuel economy testing to account for connected and autonomous vehicles. As AV technology improves and adoption increases in the future, a further reimagining of drive cycles and testing is required.