CCAT Director Participates in Talking Traffic Webinar
Dr. Henry Liu was recently invited to participate in a webinar on Smart Infrastructure, organized by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and RAI Automotive Industry NL. The moderator of the event was Bram Hendrix, Program Manager of Smart Mobility & Internationalization for RAI. Other speakers included Gary Lin, International Business Developer for Monotch and Martin Nathanson, Chief Technology Officer for P3 Mobility.
The webinar began with opening remarks from Trevor Pawl, the Chief Mobility Officer for the State of Michigan. Trevor discussed the formation of the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification, which aims to enhance Michigan’s mobility ecosystem, including developing dynamic mobility and electrification policies and supporting the startup and scale-up of emerging technologies and businesses. One of those businesses includes Cavnue, a subsidiary of Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners of Alphabet, Inc. Cavnue, along with the University of Michigan (CCAT, Mcity, and UMTRI), and Ford, will be designing a driverless vehicle lane between Ann Arbor and Detroit. For those interested in learning more about the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification and the connected corridor, Trevor spoke at our Distinguished Lecture Series in November of 2020.
Martin Nathanson discussed the difficulties that many owner-operators may experience in trying to deploy these smart technologies. One of the main points that Nathanson discussed was the automotive safety regulations at the federal level versus the state level — how it is imperative for federal governments to provide guidance to states on best practices. He also highlighted the importance of spectrum, and how the FCC’s rulemaking in November of 2020 undermined that in lieu of more Wi-Fi.
Gary Lin discussed the work that Monotch provides, which focuses on connected data, transactions, and surfaces in the mobility sector. Monotch, based in the Netherlands, is able to launch its platform on a national scale because, in 2020, they signed an exclusive contract with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. The company has experience in traffic management and R&D analytics while they receive more than 1 billion messages per today with an average latency of 5 milliseconds. Gary discussed how their Infrastructure to Vehicle software solution helps reduce congestion, travel time, and improve road safety.
Dr. Liu started his presentation on the Smart Intersections Project, a USDOT-funded research grant under the Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment. This smart infrastructure project is built off the back of the Ann Arbor Connected Environment (AACE), the first and largest real-world connected vehicle deployment in the world. It contains 75 roadside units and over 1,600 vehicles with after-market onboard units. Dr. Liu showed up the Live Traffic platform for AACE which displays the vehicles and infrastructure in the network and performance measures. The Smart Intersections Project can be used for automated vehicle control and planning purposes. The information collected can be used for freight and transit signal priority, vulnerable road user protection, emergency vehicle preemption, and more.
Those interested in viewing the entire webinar can do so below: