November 11, 2021
On September 21, Exponent vehicle engineering expert Steven G. Como, P.E., senior engineer, was announced as part of an author group that has been awarded the 2020 Trevor O. Jones Outstanding Paper Award.
The work, published by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), titled "Infrastructure-Based Sensor Data Capture Systems for Measurement of Operational Safety Assessment (OSA) Metrics" was completed with colleagues from the Institute of Automated Mobility (IAM) based in Phoenix, Arizona. Exponent is a founding partner of IAM, a public-private partnership that brings together researchers from industry, academia, non-profits, and government agencies to support the implementation of automated driving system (ADS)-equipped vehicles (AVs) throughout the state. Researchers anticipate that the work of IAM can support the increased adoption of ADS vehicle technologies to help realize their estimated safety benefits throughout the United States.
Como's paper was developed with peers from the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and the Maricopa County Department of Transportation. It presents the pioneering work the team has completed with IAM to further evaluate AV safety through real-world testing and the development of key operational safety assessment (OSA) metrics.
Prior work with IAM established the OSA safety metrics, a "quantification of behavioral safety of AVs and human-driven vehicles as they interact with each other and other road users." This paper is a critical step for pushing that work forward with the design and testing of an infrastructure-based system to continuously capture data on both ADS-equipped and human-driven vehicles for ongoing safety assessments.
The multi-modal sensor system was deployed in Anthem, Arizona, at the SMARTDrive Program test bed intersection developed by the University of Arizona Transportation Research Institute in cooperation with the Maricopa County Department of Transportation. The system incorporated traffic video cameras, vehicle-to-infrastructure roadside units, compliant signal controllers to stream signal phases and timing data, and Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensors.
The full paper is available online at SAE.org. Purchase is required.
The Trevor O. Jones Outstanding Paper Award is an endowment established by Siemens Automotive, Ford Motor Company, and ITT Automotive in honor of papers that contribute to advancements in engineering focused on electronic systems in cars, trucks, and commercial vehicles.