Autonomous vehicles: challenges, opportunities, and future implications for transportation policies

Abstract

This study investigates the challenges and opportunities pertaining to transportation policies that may arise as a result of emerging autonomous vehicle (AV) technologies. AV technologies can decrease the transportation cost and increase accessibility to low-income households and persons with mobility issues. This emerging technology also has far-reaching applications and implications beyond all current expectations. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the relevant literature and explores a broad spectrum of issues from safety to machine ethics. An indispensable part of a prospective AV development is communication over cars and infrastructure (connected vehicles). A major knowledge gap exists in AV technology with respect to routing behaviors. Connectedvehicle technology provides a great opportunity to implement an efficient and intelligent routing system. To this end, we propose a conceptual navigation model based on a fleet of AVs that are centrally dispatched over a network seeking system optimization. This study contributes to the literature on two fronts: (i) it attempts to shed light on future opportunities as well as possible hurdles associated with AV technology; and (ii) it conceptualizes a navigation model for the AV which leads to highly efficient traffic circulations.

A multicriteria decision making approach to study barriers to the adoption of autonomous vehicles

“…Several studies have briefly discussed the benefits of AVs. These include reduced transportation cost (Bagloee et al, 2016), decreased crashes (Kyriakidis et al, 2015;Li et al, 2018), reduced fuel consumption (Kyriakidis et al, 2015;Li et al 2018), lowered traffic congestion Li et al, 2018), lowered driving stress (Buckley et al, 2018), enhanced critical mobility for elderly and disabled people (Litman, 2019), reduced vehicle ownership (Bagloee et al, 2016), easened parking (Nourinejad et al, 2018) and more efficient and smooth traffic circulation (Bagloee et al, 2016). While some benefitssuch as relieving driving stress and easened parkingare easily acceptable, others are debatable.…”

“…It is also aligned with Kyriakidis et al (2015), whose extensive study across 109 countries also indicated similar results. In Bagloee et al (2016) too, system security and integrity emerged as a serious concern, due to which customers might be reluctant to use AVs. When customers perceive security and privacy to be wanting, their acceptance of AVs is likely to be low.…”

“…For example, during the initial transitional period when both autonomous and conventional vehicles coexist, various traffic network strategies (such as dedicated lanes) and management strategies (such as congestion pricing) might need to be developed. Similar to any other technology or innovation, there are physical (e.g., infrastructure development) and psychological barriers (e.g., public perception) to the large-scale adoption of AVs (Bagloee et al, 2016). There is a pressing need to understand such barriers to expedite the future adoption of AVs.…”

“…do not accept the AV as an alternative to manned vehicles and do not show confidence in it, the adoption of AVs cannot be expedited Bagloee et al (2016)Buckley et al, 2018);Li et al (2018human drivers and can have a significant impact on employment.…”

Fault‐tolerant path‐following control for in‐wheel‐motor‐driven autonomous ground vehicles with differential steering

“…Nevertheless, a high degree of mass mobilization for societal and individual well-being comes at a price. Such mobilization makes resource consumption, global warming, noise pollution, traffic congestion and traffic incidents increasingly common and extremely challenging problems for academia, industry, society and governments [1,2]. To mitigate these problems, electrification and intellectualization have become two parallel and frequently discussed topics for automobiles.…”