Automated highway systems (AHS) are receiving world wide attention as a future transportation system. In AHS, drivers are keed from the operation of vehicles. In the United States, the National AHS Consortium (NAHSC) was formed in 1994 to pursue the design arid development of the AHS, aiming an AHS demonstration in 1997 and an AHS operational test in 2002. As a core member of NAHSC, the California Partners of Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH) is playing a significant role in this national project.The California PATH program was established in 1986 by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at the University of California at Berkeley to conduct research on transportation systems, which include AHS, to find solutions for California transportation problems such as congestion, mobility and productivity of system, safety, air quality and environment, energy consumption, cost effectiveness and regional and statewide economic health.The concept of AHS presented at the GM Pavilion of the 1939 World Fair in New York aroused a good deal of interest. However, the current problems such as congestion were not severe enough and the required technology was not mature enough to arouse more than a passing inter1:st. Other visible activities took place in the early 1970s when the newly created United States Department of Transportation (US DOT) tried to focus recent advances in aerospace technology on the ground transportation problem. The European consortium, Prometheus, and the PATH established in 1986 have triggered the third surge of interest. Recently, Japanese formed the AHS Research Association (AHSRA). This talk will be focused on recent activities on AHS at the Califomia PATH. AHS will include control problems fiom the vehicle level to the highway network level. The talk will cover PATH work at all levels, but an emphasis will be given to control problems at the vehicle level, which will offer a number of challenging opportunities to control engineers.-1-
