Advancing Work Zone Safety Technology Reg Viray

Agenda Enabling Work Zone Safety Technology Development ◦ Virginia Connected Corridors ◦ Virginia Smart Road ◦ Northern Virginia Test Bed ◦ IT Infrastructure

Research and Development of Work Zone Safety Technology ◦ Connected ◦ Automated

Enabling Work Zone Safety Technology Development

Virginia Connected Corridors Mission: Provide an open connected vehicle environment where concepts can be developed, tested, deployed, and evaluated in real world operating environments.

Virginia Smart Road

VTTI officially opened the Smart Road in 2000 partnership with VDOT

22,000+ hours of groundbreaking research

Weather, lighting, diverse pavement, intersection

Virginia Smart Road

325 acres

6+ miles of roadway

Differential GPS

Cellular coverage with varying levels of service

Continuous DSRC coverage

Contiguous driving in a mix of environments

Northern Virginia Test Bed

Real-world challenges

Diverse roadway environments

Interface to VDOT Northern Region Traffic Operations Center

Over 60 DSRC RSUs

Over 20 connected intersections

Digitized signal phase and timing, traveler information messages, active traffic management, etc.

Virginia Connected Corridors

Work Zone Safety Technology Research and Development

Investigation of Crashes in Work Zones in Virginia

A majority of crashes occurred in VDOT’s Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, and Richmond districts.

Possible Contributing Factors to Work Zone Crashes: ◦ Driver inattention/behavior ◦ Road geometrics/sight distance ◦ Mobile operations ◦ Not following the Virginia Work Area Protection

Manual

A review of innovative and experimental devices and technologies revealed that none of the devices evaluated were capable of simultaneously meeting all of the most desirable criteria for mobile operations protection. These criteria were as follows: ◦ Reduce exposure of workers to vehicles ◦ Warn motorists and work crews to minimize the

likelihood of a crash ◦ Minimize the severity of crashes once they occur ◦ Provide separation between work crew and

traffic ◦ Improve work zone visibility and presence

VCC Work Zone Components

VCC Mobile Work Zone Alerting Video

VCC Worker App Location and status updates from smart phone with app (for now)

User selects an activity and duty status

Work Zone app sends position and activity data directly to VCC Cloud via cellular comms

VCC Cloud processes incoming messages and creates advisories and streaming alerts for drivers ◦ Clustering of multiple worker reports ◦ TIM messages sent via DSRC ◦ Proprietary messages sent via cellular to VCC Mobile

Messages are received on VCC Mobile and displayed to driver based on position, speed, direction, etc.

VCC Worker Vest Mobile Phone with VCC Worker App

LEDs

GPS

Wireless Communication ◦ Dedicated Short Range Communication ◦ Cellular

Worker Warning System ◦ Auditory ◦ Haptic

VCC Worker App

VCC Cloud builds dynamic traveler messages and pushes them to drivers via DSRC and cellular

Clusters multiple workers together, updated every 10 s

Locations of individual workers or clusters are streamed to VCC Mobile when close

VCC Worker Goals

Migrate worker app from cell phone to more rugged and “automatic” platform

Use of base station in work zone area eliminates need for multiple data plans

Evaluate more accurate and effective localization than available via GPS

Provides location and activity info, log workers into and out of active zones

Warnings sent to drivers through mobile apps

Warnings provided to workers via flashing LEDs and/or haptic cues

VCC Mobile App Work Zone Alerting Digitization of physical roadway signage

Sourced from vdotdatasharing.org

Single geo-reference for each work zone ◦ Point and radius ◦ Shape point set

Limited timing information ◦ Planned start and end times ◦ No apparent updates to actual times

Generalized message text ◦ VCC currently parses messages to more

concise form and structures into a Traveler Information Message

VCC Mobile App Work Zone Alerting: Example Message

On US-50 (Arlington Blvd) in the County of Fairfax at the ramp to and from I-495N, motorists can expect potential delays in this area from 03/05/18 at 4:00 AM until 03/09/18 at 5:00 PM due to roadside maintenance. The east right shoulder is closed. The west right shoulder is closed. The shoulders of the ramps will be closed.

VCC Mobile App Work Zone Alerting Message Converted

VCC Mobile App Work Zone Alerting: Desired Level of Information

VCC Work Zone Builder

Activity Areas

Lane Transitions

Approaches

Terminations

Special Features

VCC Work Zone Builder

VCC Work Zone Builder Goals Tablet based app to be used by VDOT Inspectors and/or contractor

User “builds” work zone by adding graphical objects to a map view

App suggests and validate feature locations based on WAPM guidelines

Combine features into a single data container and upload to VCC Cloud

Deploy message streaming protocol to get relevant data to VCC Mobile for contextual driver messaging

Will support real time updates to planned and active times

Start with CV requirements but develop an interaction and data model that will support AV as well

Automated TMA Characterization

Reducing need for human drivers at risk

Evaluating capabilities and suitability for various operations tasks

Identifying edge cases and potential for misuse

Drafting operational and safety guidelines

Automated TMA System Concept

2018 Development Activities Provide open access to VCC facilities and data to support application development and test ◦ Public API ◦ Support for test, evaluation, and prototype

deployment ◦ Internal or external processing configurations

Migrate VCC Mobile to cross platform deployment architecture ◦ Support both Android and iOS ◦ Invite targeted user groups to expand

deployment base

Implement RTK GPS correction base station and distribution system for the VCC environment

Questions? Reg Viray | rviray@vtti.vt.edu