Automated highway system

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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.

1 How it works
2 Early Development
3 Deployments
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] How it works

In one scheme, the roadway has magnetized stainless-steel spikes driven one meter apart in its center^{[citation needed]}. 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, which are controlled by a 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] Early Development

The origin of research on AHS was done by a team from The Ohio State University led by Dr. Robert E. Fenton. Their first automated vehicle was built in 1962, and is believed to be the first vehicle to contain a computer. Steering, braking and speed were controlled through the onboard electronics, which filled the trunk, back seat and most of the front of the passenger side of the car. Research continued at OSU until federal funding was cut in the early 1980's.

[edit] Deployments

The PATH project, 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. Such an autonomous cruise control system is being developed by Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen and Toyota. [1]