TOPIC – 4 AUTOMATED HIGHWAY SYSTEM

4.1 INTRODUCTION
An Automated highway system (AHS) or Smart Road is a proposed intelligent transportation system
technology designed to provide for driverless cars on specific rights-of-way. It is most often touted as a
means of traffic congestion relief, since it drastically reduces following distances and thus allows more cars
to occupy a given stretch of road.

Every major city suffers from the problems that are related to increasing mobility demands. Cities have to
deal with pollution, congestion and safety problems caused by increasing traffic. Traditional transport
systems are not sufficient anymore to cope with these increasing problems.

With the exception of some automatically operated metro systems (Paris, London and Lille) and some
recently introduced automated buses and people-movers transport systems in the present-day European city
are mostly of a traditional type.

4.2 AUTOMATED HIGHWAY SYSTEMS

The Automated Highway System (AHS) concept defines a new relationship between vehicles and the
highway infrastructure. AHS refers to a set of designated lanes on a limited access roadway where specially
equipped vehicles are operated under completely automatic control. AHS uses vehicle and highway control
technologies that shift driving functions from the driver/operator to the vehicle. Throttle, steering, and
braking are automatically controlled to provide safer and more convenient travel. AHS also uses
communication, sensor and obstacle-detection technologies to recognize and react to external infrastructure
conditions. The vehicles and highway cooperate to coordinate vehicle movement, avoid obstacles and
improve traffic flow, improving safety and reducing congestion. In sum, the AHS concept combines on-
board vehicle intelligence with a range of intelligent technologies installed onto existing highway
infrastructure and communication technologies that connect vehicles to highway infrastructure.

4.3 MAJOR AHS GOALS

The AHS program is designed to influence how and when vehicle-highway automation will be introduced.
AHS deployments will be tailored to meet the needs of public, commercial, transit, and individual travelers
in rural and urban communities. The major goals are to:

1. Improve safety by significantly reducing:

Fatalities.

 Personal injury.

 Pain and suffering.

 Anxiety and stress of driving.

Save money and optimize investment by:

 Maximizing efficiency of the existing infrastructure investment.

 Integrating other ITS services and architecture to achieve smooth traffic flow.

 Using available and near-term applied technology to avoid costs of conventional highway build-out.

 Developing affordable equipment, vehicles, infrastructure, operations, maintenance, and user fees.

 Closing the gap on predicted infrastructure needs.

 Using public/private partnerships for shared risk; using the National AHS Consortium as a global focal
point to influence foreign deployment efforts.

 Reducing fuel consumption and costs, maintenance, wear-and-tear, labor costs, insurance costs, and
property damage.

4.4 SAFETY AND FAULT TOLERANCE

Although the solutions to most of the technical problems in vehicle control, traffic management,
information systems, and communications have been found, the envisioned AHS will never be deployed
unless the safety of the overall system can be verified. One issue which is often overlooked by researchers is
the possibility of undesirable interaction of the systems. An example in [Safety92] mentions two devices
which try to maintain vehicles at constant lateral spacing using side range sensing. If the devices (and the
vehicles) have different dynamics, it is possible that one or both vehicles may become unstable, possibly
resulting in a collision. Furakawa approaches the automobile safety question from an interesting perspective:
the instinctive ability of humans (and animals) to sense and avoid dangers, an ability which is impaired
when driving a car. Furakawa notes that building this instinctive function into automobiles as a form of
intelligent control technology is a good approach to improve safety. Current research on safety and fault
tolerance includes lane crossing studies , sensor validation, fault tolerant design for AHS, emergency
manoeuvres for automated vehicles, and design constraints on intelligent vehicle controllers.

4.5 SAFETY FEATURES

Intersection and signal warning Using information transmitted from the Driving Safety Support System
(DSSS), drivers can receive audible and display warnings when approaching some low-visibility
intersections.

School zone alerts

When the vehicle enters an elementary school zone and the system determines that a safety warning is
appropriate, based on real-time vehicle information (speed, acceleration, braking, etc.), it provides audible
and display warnings to direct driver attention. This feature is already available in the recently-released
Nissan Skyline Crossover.

Navigation-linked speed control

The system can slow the vehicle’s speed through engine braking, for instance, if it determines the car is
traveling too fast for the sharpness of a corner or is approaching a tollgate too quickly. This can also make
driving more fuel efficient. This feature is currently in use on the Nissan Eco series, a line of greener cars
released in Japan in April.
 TOPIC – 4 AUTOMATED HIGHWAY SYSTEM

Faster route searches

Using probe data (wireless) traffic information from individual vehicles sent to the Carwings Center, this
system supplies information for roads, such as waiting times at intersections and traffic signals and delivers
it to other vehicles in the area. Using this information for route calculation makes route searches more
precise, moves traffic faster, reduces traffic congestion and promotes greener driving.

4.5 BENEFITS TO SOCIETY

 Reduced highway congestion and increased safety and security.

• Reduced overall fossil fuel consumption and emissions.

• Support for response to national emergencies, both civil and national defence.

• Support for enhancing the nation's robustness and vitality with a sustainable transportation system.

• Transportation system that increases mobility of people and goods, which can potentially increase
productivity, enhance competitiveness, and result in economic growth

4.5 CONCLUSION
Automated Highway Systems brings major transportation benefits in terms of safety, efficiency,
affordability and usability, and environment in order to achieve its development goals.

A key feature of the control design architecture is the separation of the various control functions into distinct
layers with well-defined interfaces. Each layer is then designed with its own model that is suited to the
functions for which it is responsible. The models at the various layers are different not only in terms of their
formal structure (ranging from differential equations to state machines to static graphs), but also in the
entities that have a role in them.

The AHS is a complex large-scale control system, whose design required advances in sensor, actuator, and
communication technologies (not discussed here) and in techniques of control system synthesis and analysis.
It is a measure of the advanced state of the art that these techniques have reached a stage that they could be
successfully used in the AHS project.

Though it has been said so, the reasons why many federal programs like the National Automated Highway
System Research Program (NAHSRP) failed was that the program was trapped in technology-optimism.
Several U.S. DOT reports on AHS show that there are no technical and non-technical showstoppers.
However, legal, institutional, and societal challenges just as critical as technical issues. Moreover, these
institutional and societal issues cannot be settled in one day, because they are much to do with people’s
perception, behaviour, consensus and social changes based on those.