Road Tested

Transportation-infrastructure expert Kirk Steudle reflects on the rapid progress toward the connected-AV future and the challenges ahead.

March 1, 2019

Lindsay Brooke

The tunnel used for signal-interference testing at the American Center for Mobility in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The facility is a successful example of public-private collaborations vital to creating safe and reliable AVs. (Image: ACM)

“In the auto industry, mechanical and electrical engineers work from the tire up. Civil engineers work from the tire down,” quips Kirk Steudle. “And although it’s taken a while for both to understand each other’s jargon, the connected-and-autonomous vehicle is forcing them all together—to solve problems for society’s mobility.”

Steudle, a registered professional engineer, has been at the vehicle-to-road nexus his entire career. Last October he retired as director of the Michigan Dept. of Transportation where, among many achievements, his leadership helped put the state and its core industry in the vanguard of connected-car and AV-related developments, testing, and infrastructure standards. During his final year at MDoT, he also served as interim CEO of the American Center for Mobility, the new 500-acre AV proving ground and test center near Ann Arbor.

Econolite senior VP Kirk Steudle is a globally-recognized expert in transportation systems and related technology (Image: Lindsay Brooke)

Now senior VP of the Transportation Systems Group at Econolite, a traffic-network engineering and integration company, Steudle spoke with SAE’s Autonomous Vehicle Engineering about transportation’s evolution and the challenges ahead.

“Looking back to 2006, ‘smart’ phones hadn’t yet been invented. The DARPA Challenge for self-driving vehicles was happening, but at the state DoT level we weren’t talking about automated or autonomous driving; we were talking about connected vehicles and the infrastructure,” he recalled. “And there was significant conversation asking why should states be involved: Why can’t the auto industry work this out themselves? After all, DoT’s aren’t involved with seat belts or stability control, went the argument.”

Government-industry collaboration has since proved to be vital in accelerating progress. The Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership (CAMP) between Ford and General Motors, working with NHTSA, helped implement crash-avoidance countermeasures in passenger cars to improve traffic safety, and proved V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure) technology could work. The U.S. DoT’s Safety Pilot Model Deployment, launched in 2011 in Ann Arbor, “put this subject on the front stage,” Steudle said. “It proved that we could have different auto-makers talk to each other and that it could be successful.”

In a demonstration at ITS World Congress that sprung from the Safety Pilot program, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stepped out of a demo vehicle to declare, “This is going to save people’s lives,” Steudle explained. “He understood that this could be game-changing.”

Traffic signals and communications

Getting policymakers into the seats of connected and autonomous vehicles is important, because the demos (such as those conducted by SAE) “help demystify the technology. The more demos we can do, the better,” Steudle asserted. “Having a test driver behind the wheel provides a level of comfort to the passenger” in these activities.

Steudle sees a trend in states and cities investing heavily in their traffic-signal systems—updating the technology and adapting it for the increased use of connected AVs. “The competing communications protocols—cellular V2X/5G and DSRC — still have to be worked out. That’s frankly not going to get solved by an infrastructure provider or a state DoT,” he explained. “It’s going to get decided by the auto companies and the telecoms.” Unlike in China, government in the U.S. “is not going to select and mandate a technology.”

But he noted that public agencies are hedging on their traffic-signal investments because of the C-V2X vs. DSRC battle. “If we knew which technology we’re going to use, implementation could accelerate. But the agencies have to be careful they’re not buying a bunch of Betamax.” As a result, some are specifying dual communication modes—”to make sure their stuff is ready for the future.” Steudle believes that cellular/5G is the ultimate solution — when it arrives.

The subject of on-road testing of AVs was “a huge debate” at Michigan DoT during Steudle’s tenure as director. “The big public discussion is, how many crashes are too many?” he observed. “But if we do nothing, some 37,000 people will continue to be killed each year. In the long run, I believe autonomous vehicles will help reduce road fatalities.”

Looking ahead six years, Steudle forecasts “technologies not invented yet, and far greater precision in those currently employed such as vehicle guidance, will transform a lot of things related to mobility. By 2025,” he said, “I think we’ll have lots of models offering true hands-free driving for freeway use. They’ll be heavily driver-assisted, not autonomous” — an important distinction which he believes industry needs to better define.