News from TRB Committee on Vehicle-Highway Automation (AHB30)
Post date: Nov 4, 2016 4:36:04 AM
From: Steven E. SHLADOVER [mailto:steve@path.berkeley.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2016 10:03 PM
Subject: News from TRB Committee on Vehicle-Highway Automation (AHB30)
Dear Members and Friends of TRB AHB30,
I would like to update you on a variety of topics involving our Committee and its activities, including the upcoming TRB Annual Meeting and next summer's Automated Vehicles Symposium (AVS17):
(1) We had a record 75 papers submitted for review for this Annual Meeting, placing an extraordinary review burden on the committee members with expertise in the topic areas of the submitted papers. Many thanks to paper review co-chair Henry Liu for sharing the burden of coordinating the review process. The accepted papers will be presented in 5 poster sessions. We will also have 6 lectern sessions (3 of which are shared with and led by other committees), 3 Sunday workshop sessions, and 3 joint subcommittee meetings in addition to our main committee meeting. It will be a very full program. If you have not registered and booked your hotel rooms yet, don't delay because advance registrations are already running 10% ahead of last year's record pace and the price of registration increases if you wait too long.
(2) When you make your travel plans for the Annual Meeting, plan to stay through the Thursday morning, January 12 meeting of the Joint Subcommittee on Challenges and Opportunities of Road Vehicle Automation. We will not only be planning breakout sessions for AVS17 but we will also have a stimulating interactive discussion about the recently released Federal Automated Vehicles Policy, including government and industry representatives and ample opportunities for audience Q&A.
(3) If you have not read the Federal Automated Vehicles Policy document yet, I encourage you to do that -- it includes a wealth of information and provides thoughtful guidance as we all try to make progress toward a more automated future. The policy document can be downloaded at:
https://www.transportation.gov/AV
The federal policy document references the SAE definitions of levels of automation and a variety of other important concepts from the SAE J3016 document. The new version of that document was released on Sept. 30, and unlike other SAE standards documents it is available for FREE at:
http://standards.sae.org/j3016_201609/
I also encourage everybody to read that document and use its terminology so that when we are discussing automation topics we can understand each other clearly and unambiguously.
(4) Our Committee and the Committee on Intelligent Transportation Systems (AHB15) were jointly awarded one of TRB's Blue Ribbon Committee awards this year (award to be given at the January meeting) in recognition of our efforts in creating and nurturing the Automated Vehicles Symposium, which has grown to become the second-largest TRB event of the year (exceeded only by the Annual Meeting).
(5) Please make your plans early for participating in AVS17. The meeting will be held in the same venue as last year, the San Francisco Hilton Union Square, but with a larger plenary and exhibit space and a much larger space for lunches and receptions so that we should not be as crowded as last year. The dates are July 11-13, 2017 for the main meeting, with ancillary meetings on the preceding and following days. Since AVS has grown into such a large meeting, it was very difficult to line up the hotel and meeting space, and there is another much larger event occurring at the same time in San Francisco, so hotel space will be significantly more expensive than this past year. Start searching for and booking your hotel space now. The AVS17 information will be posted as the plans become more fully defined at:
http://www.automatedvehiclessymposium.org/home
(6) The program for our Vehicle-Highway Automation committee meeting on Tuesday afternoon, January 10, is still under development, but I can assure you that it will be packed with new information. Details will be coming out in a future e-mail message closer to meeting time.
Best regards,
Steve Shladover
AHB30 Chair