Autonomous Vehicle Technology

Autonomous Vehicle Technology
Author: James M. Anderson
Publisher: Rand Corporation
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 0833084372

The automotive industry appears close to substantial change engendered by “self-driving” technologies. This technology offers the possibility of significant benefits to social welfare—saving lives; reducing crashes, congestion, fuel consumption, and pollution; increasing mobility for the disabled; and ultimately improving land use. This report is intended as a guide for state and federal policymakers on the many issues that this technology raises.

Autonomous Driving

Autonomous Driving
Author: Markus Maurer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 698
Release: 2016-05-21
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3662488477

This book takes a look at fully automated, autonomous vehicles and discusses many open questions: How can autonomous vehicles be integrated into the current transportation system with diverse users and human drivers? Where do automated vehicles fall under current legal frameworks? What risks are associated with automation and how will society respond to these risks? How will the marketplace react to automated vehicles and what changes may be necessary for companies? Experts from Germany and the United States define key societal, engineering, and mobility issues related to the automation of vehicles. They discuss the decisions programmers of automated vehicles must make to enable vehicles to perceive their environment, interact with other road users, and choose actions that may have ethical consequences. The authors further identify expectations and concerns that will form the basis for individual and societal acceptance of autonomous driving. While the safety benefits of such vehicles are tremendous, the authors demonstrate that these benefits will only be achieved if vehicles have an appropriate safety concept at the heart of their design. Realizing the potential of automated vehicles to reorganize traffic and transform mobility of people and goods requires similar care in the design of vehicles and networks. By covering all of these topics, the book aims to provide a current, comprehensive, and scientifically sound treatment of the emerging field of “autonomous driving".

Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous Vehicles
Author: Clifford Winston
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815738587

Better public policies can make the road smoother for self-driving vehicles and the society that soon will depend on them. Whether you find the idea of autonomous vehicles to be exciting or frightening, the truth is that they will soon become a significant everyday presence on streets and highways—not just a novel experiment attracting attention or giggles and sparking fears of runaway self-driving cars. The emergence of these vehicles represents a watershed moment in the history of transportation. If properly encouraged, this innovation promises not only to vastly improve road travel and generate huge benefits to travelers and businesses, but to also benefit the entire economy by reducing congestion and virtually eliminating vehicle accidents. The impacts of autonomous vehicles on land use, employment, and public finance are likely to be mixed. But widely assumed negative effects are generally overstated because they ignore plausible adjustments by the public and policymakers that could ameliorate them. This book by two transportation experts argues that policy analysts can play an important and constructive role in identifying and analyzing important policy issues and necessary steps to ease the advent of autonomous vehicles. Among the actions that governments must take are creating a framework for vehicle testing, making appropriate investments in the technology of highway networks to facilitate communication involving autonomous vehicles, and reforming pricing and investment policies to enable operation of autonomous vehicles to be safe and efficient. The authors argue that policymakers at all levels of government must address these and other issues sooner rather than later. Prompt and effective actions outlined in this book are necessary to ensure that autonomous vehicles will be safe and efficient when the public begins to adopt them as replacements for current vehicles.

Cost, Effectiveness, and Deployment of Fuel Economy Technologies for Light-Duty Vehicles

Cost, Effectiveness, and Deployment of Fuel Economy Technologies for Light-Duty Vehicles
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 812
Release: 2015-09-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309373913

The light-duty vehicle fleet is expected to undergo substantial technological changes over the next several decades. New powertrain designs, alternative fuels, advanced materials and significant changes to the vehicle body are being driven by increasingly stringent fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards. By the end of the next decade, cars and light-duty trucks will be more fuel efficient, weigh less, emit less air pollutants, have more safety features, and will be more expensive to purchase relative to current vehicles. Though the gasoline-powered spark ignition engine will continue to be the dominant powertrain configuration even through 2030, such vehicles will be equipped with advanced technologies, materials, electronics and controls, and aerodynamics. And by 2030, the deployment of alternative methods to propel and fuel vehicles and alternative modes of transportation, including autonomous vehicles, will be well underway. What are these new technologies - how will they work, and will some technologies be more effective than others? Written to inform The United States Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards, this new report from the National Research Council is a technical evaluation of costs, benefits, and implementation issues of fuel reduction technologies for next-generation light-duty vehicles. Cost, Effectiveness, and Deployment of Fuel Economy Technologies for Light-Duty Vehicles estimates the cost, potential efficiency improvements, and barriers to commercial deployment of technologies that might be employed from 2020 to 2030. This report describes these promising technologies and makes recommendations for their inclusion on the list of technologies applicable for the 2017-2025 CAFE standards.

Road Vehicle Automation 3

Road Vehicle Automation 3
Author: Gereon Meyer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2016-07-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319405039

This edited book comprises papers about the impacts, benefits and challenges of connected and automated cars. It is the third volume of the LNMOB series dealing with Road Vehicle Automation. The book comprises contributions from researchers, industry practitioners and policy makers, covering perspectives from the U.S., Europe and Japan. It is based on the Automated Vehicles Symposium 2015 which was jointly organized by the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in July 2015. The topical spectrum includes, but is not limited to, public sector activities, human factors, ethical and business aspects, energy and technological perspectives, vehicle systems and transportation infrastructure. This book is an indispensable source of information for academic researchers, industrial engineers and policy makers interested in the topic of road vehicle automation.

Handbook of Monte Carlo Methods

Handbook of Monte Carlo Methods
Author: Dirk P. Kroese
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 627
Release: 2013-06-06
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1118014952

A comprehensive overview of Monte Carlo simulation that explores the latest topics, techniques, and real-world applications More and more of today’s numerical problems found in engineering and finance are solved through Monte Carlo methods. The heightened popularity of these methods and their continuing development makes it important for researchers to have a comprehensive understanding of the Monte Carlo approach. Handbook of Monte Carlo Methods provides the theory, algorithms, and applications that helps provide a thorough understanding of the emerging dynamics of this rapidly-growing field. The authors begin with a discussion of fundamentals such as how to generate random numbers on a computer. Subsequent chapters discuss key Monte Carlo topics and methods, including: Random variable and stochastic process generation Markov chain Monte Carlo, featuring key algorithms such as the Metropolis-Hastings method, the Gibbs sampler, and hit-and-run Discrete-event simulation Techniques for the statistical analysis of simulation data including the delta method, steady-state estimation, and kernel density estimation Variance reduction, including importance sampling, latin hypercube sampling, and conditional Monte Carlo Estimation of derivatives and sensitivity analysis Advanced topics including cross-entropy, rare events, kernel density estimation, quasi Monte Carlo, particle systems, and randomized optimization The presented theoretical concepts are illustrated with worked examples that use MATLAB®, a related Web site houses the MATLAB® code, allowing readers to work hands-on with the material and also features the author's own lecture notes on Monte Carlo methods. Detailed appendices provide background material on probability theory, stochastic processes, and mathematical statistics as well as the key optimization concepts and techniques that are relevant to Monte Carlo simulation. Handbook of Monte Carlo Methods is an excellent reference for applied statisticians and practitioners working in the fields of engineering and finance who use or would like to learn how to use Monte Carlo in their research. It is also a suitable supplement for courses on Monte Carlo methods and computational statistics at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels.

Technologies and Approaches to Reducing the Fuel Consumption of Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles

Technologies and Approaches to Reducing the Fuel Consumption of Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2010-07-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309159474

Technologies and Approaches to Reducing the Fuel Consumption of Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles evaluates various technologies and methods that could improve the fuel economy of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, such as tractor-trailers, transit buses, and work trucks. The book also recommends approaches that federal agencies could use to regulate these vehicles' fuel consumption. Currently there are no fuel consumption standards for such vehicles, which account for about 26 percent of the transportation fuel used in the U.S. The miles-per-gallon measure used to regulate the fuel economy of passenger cars. is not appropriate for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, which are designed above all to carry loads efficiently. Instead, any regulation of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles should use a metric that reflects the efficiency with which a vehicle moves goods or passengers, such as gallons per ton-mile, a unit that reflects the amount of fuel a vehicle would use to carry a ton of goods one mile. This is called load-specific fuel consumption (LSFC). The book estimates the improvements that various technologies could achieve over the next decade in seven vehicle types. For example, using advanced diesel engines in tractor-trailers could lower their fuel consumption by up to 20 percent by 2020, and improved aerodynamics could yield an 11 percent reduction. Hybrid powertrains could lower the fuel consumption of vehicles that stop frequently, such as garbage trucks and transit buses, by as much 35 percent in the same time frame.

Autonomous Driving

Autonomous Driving
Author: Andreas Herrmann
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2018-03-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1787148343

The technology and engineering behind autonomous driving is advancing at pace. This book presents the latest technical advances and the economic, environmental and social impact driverless cars will have on individuals and the automotive industry.

Transitions to Alternative Vehicles and Fuels

Transitions to Alternative Vehicles and Fuels
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2013-04-14
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309268524

For a century, almost all light-duty vehicles (LDVs) have been powered by internal combustion engines operating on petroleum fuels. Energy security concerns about petroleum imports and the effect of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on global climate are driving interest in alternatives. Transitions to Alternative Vehicles and Fuels assesses the potential for reducing petroleum consumption and GHG emissions by 80 percent across the U.S. LDV fleet by 2050, relative to 2005. This report examines the current capability and estimated future performance and costs for each vehicle type and non-petroleum-based fuel technology as options that could significantly contribute to these goals. By analyzing scenarios that combine various fuel and vehicle pathways, the report also identifies barriers to implementation of these technologies and suggests policies to achieve the desired reductions. Several scenarios are promising, but strong, and effective policies such as research and development, subsidies, energy taxes, or regulations will be necessary to overcome barriers, such as cost and consumer choice.