Event Alert! AHB30 Mid-year Workshop: Control and Electrification of Highway Vehicles: Integrating Concepts and Infrastructure Needs - March 25-26, 2010
Post date: Sep 10, 2009 4:37:06 AM
25-26 March 2010, Oak Ridge Tennessee
Organized by the
Transportation Research Board, Committee on Vehicle-Highway Automation (AHB30)
The vision for future transportation systems is shaped by the challenges of an existing and mature transportation system. Immediate concerns in the US are congestion, safety, rising energy costs and dependency on foreign oil. These suggest that a revolutionary vision for a new transportation system paradigm (NTSP) is needed. One such vision of an NTSP involves a closer melding of the infrastructure, the vehicle, vehicle control and the vehicle’s power source, in a way that allows them to work as a coupled system rather than a loosely connected set of transportation elements.
Transportation energy is of course a major national and international concern: increasing demand for energy, dwindling conventional reserves, environmental effects and national security imperatives all drive this concern. Solutions include using and becoming less dependent on oil, diversifying electrical energy production and shifting transportation towards electrical power at the point of use. Without an unprecedented breakthrough in battery technology, the feasible approach is to invest in a more versatile and capable highway infrastructure, enabling en-route transfer of electrical energy. Many concepts are being considered: battery transfer stations for electric vehicles, ad-hoc or in-motion wireless charging, as well as the more or less conventional facilities needed for plug-in hybrid vehicles. In all cases, the need is for flexible energy delivery, efficient and predictable energy consumption, as well as real-time information to guarantee availability of resources and ultimately to ensure trip reliability.
The new and necessary capability in the physical infrastructure must be developed alongside communication and information systems (as being developed in the US IntelliDriveSM initiative). For such a system, drivers need to be able to elect to travel in a safer and more controlled traffic environment, so for example, they can plan to arrive at a battery transfer station with 5% charge remaining, not 25%. The infrastructure also needs to be able to support automated control functions such as advanced traffic control, incident detection and management, cooperative speed control and even automatic vehicle guidance.
The primary elements of an NTSP vision involve: 1) a smart and versatile infrastructure that supports quality mobility and flexible transfer of electrical energy to the vehicle (in-motion transfer being one possibility), 2) advanced vehicles capable of multi-faceted control, 3) a communications network of the type envisioned in the IntelliDriveSM initiative, and 4) intelligent and robust vehicle systems capable of interfacing with the driver and the infrastructure, to support planning and control.
This workshop will focus on further defining these elements, discussing how such elements can evolve from current research, exploring the integration of these elements and outlining steps toward achieving a NTSP. More specifically, this workshop will focus on seven key areas. The first two involve reviews of on-going initiatives, and the subsequent five involve activities to define and assess key features of an NTSP.
· Review the technical progress and challenges associated with the flexible transfer of electrical power such as battery transfer stations and in-motion wireless power transmission.
· Review the IntelliDrive initiative as a means to provide support information for energy transfer, vehicle control and automation.
· Explore the additional infrastructure needs for supporting flexible energy transfer, vehicle control and automation.
· Assess the specific needs for advanced communications networks to support flexible electrification and automation.
· Define multiple advanced control modes (e.g. cooperative speed control for efficient energy use).
· Assess the common infrastructure needs for personal mobility vehicles, freight and transit in an NTSP.
· Define the most important next steps – demonstration, evolution or grand design?