TRB Vehicle-Highway Automation Committee Information Update - 12/07/2017

Post date: Dec 21, 2017 1:59:53 AM

Dear Members and Friends of the TRB Committee on Vehicle-Highway Automation (AHB30):

The TRB Annual Meeting is now only a little over a month away, so I wanted to let you know about the preparations and the events that we will be hosting for that meeting, as well as urging everybody to start thinking about next summer’s AVS18.

We received 60 papers for peer review for the Annual Meeting, and of those 32 have been accepted for presentation in three poster sessions. Several of these will be re-reviewed for possible publication in the Transportation Research Record – and I will be soliciting re-reviews from several of you regarding those papers in the immediate future. The paper review process is one of the most important committee activities, and I am seeking a volunteer now to serve as paper review co-chair for next year’s Annual Meeting so that we can divide up the review coordination responsibilities. Please let me know if you are interested in working on this, especially if you might be interested in continuing in that role for more than one year.

I have attached a pdf file identifying the full set of events that our Committee is sponsoring or co-sponsoring so that you can see the range of events that will be available when you come to the Annual Meeting. To get the detailed listings of presentations and posters you need to check the Annual Meeting website. In addition to the formal sessions, we will have a full meeting of the Committee on Tuesday afternoon and our three joint subcommittees will also be meeting and will be seeking your attention to participate in those meetings (all of which are open to any interested participants, subject only to meeting room space constraints).

The Tuesday afternoon Committee meeting will include a discussion of topics that people are interested in recommending for inclusion in next summer’s Automated Vehicles Symposium (AVS18), We will also have a series of brief presentations to introduce the newest projects on vehicle-highway automation in the U.S. and many other countries around the world – I’m sure that everybody will find out something that they didn’t know before, based on the great diversity of new project introductions that will be on offer.

The Thursday morning meeting of the Joint Subcommittee on Challenges and Opportunities of Road Vehicle Automation (CORVA) will include presentations about the user acceptance issues associated with vehicle automation and about the new GAO report recommending how the U.S. DOT should be preparing for road vehicle automation, plus the annual session of planning breakout sessions for next summer’s Automated Vehicles Symposium (AVS18). Please plan to attend to bring forward your thoughts about what to discuss at AVS18 and to volunteer to help on organizing it.

I will be following up later this month with another message with more details on the agendas for these meetings.

It’s not too early to start thinking about AVS18, which will be July 9-12 in San Francisco. In order to enable attendees to have more choice of breakout sessions, we will start the first round of breakout sessions on Monday afternoon, so everybody will be able to attend three afternoons of breakout discussions. Since summer is a very busy season in San Francisco, hotel space will again be scarce and expensive, so we advise everybody to book your hotel space as early as possible. Because of the high cost of holding the meeting in San Francisco, AVS19 will be moving to a new venue in a different region of the country. As soon as the contracts for AVS19 are settled, we will announce the new location and dates.

Best regards,

Steve Shladover, Chair

TRB Committee on Vehicle-Highway Automation (AHB30)