麻豆传媒

Examining the interactions between connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) and human drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians and more raises an important question: How do you run tests to improve the safety of human operators without endangering them in the process? 

Virtual simulation offers a solution, providing the ability to place human participants in artificial environments with simulated CAVs to examine human performance behavior without simultaneously endangering the safety of a human participant who would have to drive, walk or cycle around a test track alongside an unproven, self-driven vehicle. However, virtual simulation comes with limitations as to how accurately it reflects the behaviors of real human participants.

Researchers in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are working to overcome these roadblocks to testing CAV safety.

The research team of Chaozhe He, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering; Austin Angulo and Irina Benedyk, both assistant professors of civil, structural and environmental engineering; and Kevin Hulme, program manager for the Stephen Still Institute for Sustainable Transportation and Logistics has gained access to an innovative facility at the University of Michigan that will allow them to integrate human participants within a virtual environment and develop mixed reality testing capabilities using UB’s new Transportation Research and Visualization Laboratory (TRAVL).

The University of Michigan’s Mcity is a 32-acre testing site that provides a controlled environment to test automated vehicles before they are deployed on public streets. Mcity 2.0 was created with a $5.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a digital infrastructure overlay to the Mcity facility. A cloud-based, augmented-reality CAV testbed, Mcity 2.0 is equipped with a networking communications platform that offers a way to communicate between the digital twin environment and the test track.

The UB team was granted access to Mcity 2.0, one of three proposals that were approved.

“What this means, at the end of the day, is that we can have multiple people in simulators here at UB controlling real vehicles and dummies on the test track at Mcity, interacting with real CAVs on the test track, all within a virtual simulation,” explains Angulo, who is also director of the TRAVL lab. “It’s a bit mind-bending, but incredible.”

The UB researchers will use the facility to conduct multi-agent testing and verification of CAV operations with human drivers and vulnerable road users, including pedestrians and people on bikes or scooters.

After integrating the multi-agent physical presence at the TRAVL lab virtually within the digital twin of the Mcity facility, the team will enable the remote presence of vehicles and vulnerable road users within the virtual simulators at Mcity. Taking advantage of the physical equipment in the TRAVL lab, along with the digital components at Mcity, will allow the team to jointly test interactions with real vehicles on the physical test track, extending reality-testing capability at Mcity.

“Our work would enhance current TRAVL capabilities and strengthen UB’s position in CAV research,” says He, the project’s principal investigator. “The investigation is the first of its kind in the world. Once it succeeds, we will be in a stronger position to pursue external funding and conduct impactful research.”

Angulo notes that one particular aspect of the study involves testing the relationship between CAVs and bicycles when a CAV passes in a shared lane.

“This may sound like a rather mundane scenario, but it is a rather dangerous one,” he points out. “There is very little data that exists for evaluating CAV safety performance and no data exists for understanding bicyclist experiences or preferences.”

Team members will use the remote capabilities to run scenarios between a CAV at the Mcity test track and a dummy bicyclist. They hope to answer such important questions as: At what speed should the CAV pass the bicyclist? How well does the CAV react to sudden changes in the bicyclist’s behavior? Does the presence of a parked car on the curb impact how much space the CAV should leave between itself and the bicycle?

The testing can be taken a step further to evaluate the bicyclist’s lane position, speed, breaking, eye tracking and more to understand how the person responds to the passing CAV and what behaviors they might see as unsafe, stressful or distracting.

“These are all very relevant questions that need answering so that we can better design CAV safety behavior and operations,” Angulo says. “This data will provide invaluable insight into the experiences of vulnerable road users and how to improve CAV behavior to enable all modalities on the road.”