Autonomy
The rapid technological advances in autonomy are unveiling the curtain of a significant revolution in human mobility, i.e., autonomous vehicles (AVs), which can benefit societies and businesses over the coming 10 years. However, the complexity of AV systems is growing continuously, especially for higher levels of autonomy. Ranging from 0 (fully manual) to 5 (fully autonomous), the highest level of autonomy technically available in the market is level 4 (high driving automation), recently introduced by Waymo in Phoenix, Arizona, which is selected partly due to its ideal condition of weather, traffic, and environment compared to other locations in the US. The challenge for the next-generation AVs in levels 4 and 5 is how to deal with unexpected weather conditions, severe traffic, and complicated environment.
To tackle, the MECIS Center envisions a comprehensive portfolio of multidisciplinary research activities to develop and implement cutting-edge computer vision and navigation/control algorithms, along with both model-based and field testing of the designed computer vision and control algorithms. Moreover, as the public is still relatively reluctant or neutrally intended to accept and adopt AVs, this subproject will further investigate the public acceptance and policy issues, while also developing new human-computer interaction algorithms to offer better AV rides, thereby further promoting the public interest in AVs, especially in shared-use AV services. Last but not least, this subproject will explore the network-wide congestion effects of innovative vehicle (AV)-to-infrastructure communications and the emerging fleet-operated shared AV services.
