Automated highway system
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An automated highway system (AHS) or Smart Road is an advanced intelligent transportation system technology designed to provide for driverless cars on specific rights-of-way. It is most often touted as a means of traffic congestion relief, since it drastically reduces following distances and thus allows more cars to occupy a given stretch of road.
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[edit] How it works
The roadway has magnetized stainless-steel spikes driven one meter apart in its center. The car senses the spikes to measure its speed and locate the center of the lane. Furthermore, the spikes can have either magnetic north or magnetic south facing up. The roadway thus has small amounts of digital data describing interchanges, recommended speeds, etc.
The cars have power steering and automatic speed controls, but these are controlled by the computer.
The cars organize themselves into platoons of eight to twenty-five cars. The platoons drive themselves a meter apart, so that air resistance is minimized. The distance between platoons is the conventional braking distance. If anything goes wrong, the maximum number of harmed cars should be one platoon.
[edit] Deployments
A prototype automated highway system was tested in San Diego County, California in 1991 along Interstate 15. However, despite the technical success of the program, investment has moved more toward autonomous intelligent vehicles rather than building specialized infrastructure. The AHS system places sensory technology in cars that can read passive road markings, and use radar and inter-car communications to make the cars organize themselves without the intervention of drivers.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Vehicle Platooning and Automated Highways Description of the San Diego experiment.
- Underground Automated Highway Systems Forecast for the future of urban transportation.
