A Research Testbed Experimental Connectivity and Automation in Cars
Nice, Matthew Walter
0000-0003-3609-1760
:
2024-02-06
Abstract
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are engineered systems in which the computational components and physical components of the system are interdependent and deeply linked. Discovery and development of CPS technologies are changing the way people interact with engineered systems. Modern transportation systems are CPS’s, and there is a major opportunity to change the way that people interact transportation systems. Approximately 40,000 fatalities and 2.5 million injuries occurred on US roadways last year alone. The main contribution of this dissertation is a CPS testbed for experimental connectivity and automation in cars. This testbed has an extensive set of capabilities; the design, development, and deployment of these compose the dissertation. Part 1 establishes new pipelines for experimental control, Part 2 involves scaling up for mobile traffic control, and Part 3 expands the testbed interfaces to integrate infrastructure communications. The testbed platform is built from a commodity vehicle at its base, with low-cost computing hardware and a feature-rich open source software stack. Ultimately this capable and extensible testbed acts to break down barriers to fielding promising research ideas which could greatly diminish the terrible costs of the status quo in our roadways today.