Session 3B: Traffic in a Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Environment: Operational Considerations

Session Description: This session will focus on challenges and opportunities presented by connected and autonomous vehicles and their influence on traffic operations.

Moderator: Vikash V. Gayah, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Penn State University

• Improved signalized intersection operations with connected and autonomous vehicles, S. Ilgin Guler, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Penn State University
• The challenges and opportunities of map-based data sharing in connected and autonomous vehicles, Sean Brennan, PhD, Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, Penn State University
• Connected and automated vehicle pilot deployments in Pittsburgh, Stan Caldwell, Executive Director, Traffic21 Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

Speaker Bios:

S. Ilgin Guler is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. Her research interests include multi-modal urban traffic operations and control, intelligent transportation systems, connected and autonomous vehicles, and infrastructure management. She received dual B.S. degrees from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey in civil engineering and industrial engineering and operations research. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley in civil and environmental engineering. She has served as a post-doctoral scholar in the Institute of Transport Systems and Planning at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. With over seven years of research, teaching, and industry experience in traffic operations, Dr. Guler has been the primary author of multiple research proposals funded by institutions such as the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), South Dakota Department of Transportation, Swiss National Science Foundation, and Swiss Association of Road Transportation Experts. She is currently serving as the Penn State PI on NCHRP 17-84: Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Performance Functions for the Highway Safety Manual. Her research has resulted in 20 peer-reviewed journal articles and 28 refereed conference proceedings on topics that include multi-modal traffic safety, multi-modal traffic operations, and multi-modal traffic control. She serves as an active member of the Transportation Research Board’s Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics committee (AHB 45).

Dr. Sean Brennan is a professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State, where he has taught since 2003. He leads a group of roughly 30 graduate and undergraduate engineers in the Intelligent Vehicles and Systems group. He is heavily involved with ground vehicle testing, automation, and connectivity research at The Larson Transportation Institute, Penn State’s transportation research center. His research focuses on vehicle dynamics and automation, both at high speeds (highway vehicles) and low speeds (ground robotics and nuclear inspection robotics), map-based estimation of vehicle position, health, safety, and other factors particularly using vehicle infrastructure and vehicle-to-vehicle interaction communication (automation, teleoperation, vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-grid, and driving simulation). His research has resulted in approximately 150 peer-reviewed publications. In 2008, he was awarded the SAE Teetor Award. He also won a number of Penn State awards including the Premier Teaching Award in 2011, Outstanding Teaching Award in 2008, and the Quality Improvement Award in 2005 for his outreach activity training high-school students in vehicle dynamics and automation. He has served as an associate editor of the Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control as well as the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology. He was also the former chair, vice-chair, secretary, and conference organizer for ASME’s Dynamic Systems and Control Technical Committee on Automotive and Transportation Systems.

Stan Caldwell serves as executive director at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh of both the Traffic21 Institute and Mobility21 National University Transportation Center designated by the US Department of Transportation. These centers support faculty and students from across the university in technology-focused interdisciplinary transportation research and education. The research centers maintain a primary emphasis on deploying research and technology in the community and work with public and private partners to use Pittsburgh and the region as a smart transportation test bed. Stan also serves as adjunct associate professor of transportation and public policy.