Smart Cities Connected and Autonomous Vehicles Readiness Index

Abstract

Every major car manufacturer and leading technology company today is pursuing the development of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs). However, given cities will be most affected by CAVs, there is an urgent need to assess whether our cities are prepared and will respond well to the advancement in CAV technology. This paper proposes the first readiness index to measure the extent to which current cities are ready for CAVs. We consider three key elements in computing a CAV readiness score: a city's policies and regulations, its physical infrastructure, and its cyber infrastructure. We identify 16 major factors related to the key elements contributing to a city's readiness, and compute the readiness index as a weighted average of these factors. Moreover, we collected survey responses regarding the importance of each factor from 13 of the most populous US cities. We also selected a metric for quantifying each factor, and collected the corresponding data from our survey and existing studies. We then leverage decision trees as a machine learning model to predict 52 major US cities' readiness for CAVs. While it is difficult to draw general conclusions on our cities' readiness due to limited data availability, our preliminary study does suggest that there is a big gap between our industry and public's interest in CAVs and the policy and infrastructure support provided by our cities. Most importantly, we believe that the proposed readiness index provides practical guidelines for policy makers and planners to improve their cities' policies and infrastructure to facilitate CAVs.

Autonomous Vehicle Adoption in Developing Countries: Futurist Insights

“…Clear and consistent markers are required for AVs to prevent misunderstanding and for sensors to interpret road information [51]. As a result, cities should have regular markings and quality road signs that are not readily worn out and can be seen properly [52]. Furthermore, various infrastructure adjustments are suggested, such as the placement of a transmitter on the road surface, which allows for a more effective diagnosis to avoid misinterpretation, for example, the identification of a painted white line and a genuine line.…”

“…High-tech roadside amenities are among the other necessary road constructions. Because most AVs are likely to be electric, a considerable number of high-tech roadside amenities, such as electric vehicle charging stations, are necessary [52,56].…”

Trajectory Planning for an Autonomous Vehicle in Multi-Vehicle Traffic Scenarios

“…Introduction sustainable cities by smart traffic management. However, studies on readiness indexes of cities, such as policy and regulation, physical infrastructure and cyber infrastructures, indicate that cities are far from ready (Khan et al, 2019) in integrating the technology. Complex technology, liability, ethics and many other parameters are challenges that AVs face and influence production of AVs by automotive companies (Bagloee et al, 2016;Martıńez-Dıáz et al, 2018).…”

Flexible MPC-based Conflict Resolution Using Online Adaptive ADMM

“…To compare protocols against each other in CARLA, a common benchmark has to be used. 2 In order for the benchmark to provide a reference point for the results, an estimated delay is desired. The theoretical estimated delay for a certain case however is difficult to directly calculate mainly due to the nonlinear nature of the agent dynamics, the large combinatorial passing order problem, etc.…”

“…Intersections are a major contributor to traffic delays and accidents, hence autonomous vehicles need to be equipped to deal with them efficiently [1]. Since intersections often lack the infrastructure required to centrally resolve the conflicts [2], autonomous vehicles must be able to resolve conflicts without any external infrastructure. Navigating unmanaged intersections using decentralized policies is challenging due to the risk of deadlocks or accidents: communication and conflict resolution protocols among autonomous vehicles are needed.…”