Introduction to the Project

Welcome to the ADS project wiki page for details on the Automated Driving System Workzone project. This page presents details primarily focused on the Penn State team activity. Additional details can be found at the PennDOT’s public ADS page, which can be found here.

The Motivation for the Safe Integration of Automated Vehicles into Work Zones

In 2015 there were an estimated 96,626 crashes in work zones, an increase of 7.8 percent from 2014. This makes 2015 the second year in a row that work zone crashes rose after a low of 67,887 in 2013. For comparison, in 2009 there were 667 work zone fatalities. Crashes in highway work zones have killed at least 4,700 Americans – more than two a day – and injured 200,000 in the last five years alone. There are more than 40,000 injuries in work zones each year. About 85 percent of people killed in work zones are motorists, not workers.

In Pennsylvania, the number of work zone crashes has steadily increased since 2007. Pennsylvania has also consistently appeared in the top 10 states with the most commercial motor vehicle-related work zone crashes.

With Autonmous Vehciles being increasingly deployed to public roads, construction zones may present challenges to these vehicles, construction zone operators, and the surrounding traffic. Construction zones, by definition, are new areas with features that did not exist earlier, that are dynamic, and that may not follow typical conventions. The AV behaviors in workzones may not follow human-driven vehicle behavior, which can confuse construction zone operators that may assume human driving behavior. And as both AVs and construction environments interact with each other, the vehicles nearby the AV may also need to respond to new behaviors. Our project intends to investigate these behaviors to improve safety in and around work zones for AVs. This is achieved by increasing identification and connectivity with work zone artifacts, improving visibility by coating pavement marking and work zone artifacts, and improving mapping of work zones.

Project Vision, Mission, Goals, and Objectives

Vision – Enable automated vehicles to safely operate in work zones without human intervention.

Mission – Reduce traffic fatalities and increase mobility for all Americans in work zones through automated vehicles.

Goals – Achieve safe navigation of automated vehicles on par with non-distracted, humanoperated automated vehicles within work zones.

Objectives of this project:

Evaluate the impact of improved connectivity between the AVs and the work zone artifacts using DSRC/C-V2X.
Evaluate the impact of increased visibility (machine vision) of pavement markings and work zone artifacts on AVs through innovative coatings
Evaluate the impact of providing high definition mapping of work zone artifacts (i.e. cones, barrels, workers, vehicles)
Improve the map information dissemination process from the mapping providers and/or infrastructure owners/operators to the AVs through standardization of digital mapping information for work zones.