With advances in communication, computation, and control technologies, fleets of Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) can be deployed to flexibly provide on-demand transportation services in near future. Therefore, it is important to start the development of CAV testbeds and piloted projects for the deployment of CAVs to complement some of the on-going efforts in North Carolina on the developed infrastructure for AVs such as Signal Phasing and Timing (SPaT) Challenge for testing coordinated signal systems on NC55 in Cary. The goal of this project is to develop and operationalize a flexible and customizable open hardware/software testbed for connected autonomous microtransit vehicles consisting of three self-driving shuttles. This will be achieved by developing and operationalizing a CAV testbed of three self-driving shuttles through the following objectives:
- Installing, testing, and operationalizing the hardware components of the CAV testbed, in which all hardware components are modifiable according to the application in mind,
- Developing and testing software components of the CAV testbed,
- Installing, testing, and operationalizing the communication devices of the CAV testbed with the capability of communicating with other vehicles and infrastructure which follow SAE and IEEE standards for CAVs,
- Integration of the components of the developed CAV testbed,
- Implementation and deployment of the CAV testbed,
- Development and offering workshops on the develop technology in order to safely give access to transportation researchers in NC to use the developed CAV testbed.
This will be a great opportunity for the CAV research community in North Carolina to have access to this unique, comprehensive, and flexible testbed of CAVs with a focus on microtransit vehicle systems. This will also provide information needed to design future transportation that remains relevant and ready for future CAV technologies.
