Our research group uses sensing technologies, models, data, and advanced analytics to understand mobility systems so that we can improve them. Our research projects explore the interplay between autonomous vehicles and phantom traffic jams. We also use large mobility datasets to understand urban traffic congestion at city scales, and freight rail traffic at the regional scale. We build mathematical models and systems theory tools to understand the underlying behavior of traffic flow.
Our research shows how a small number of automated vehicles can help smooth traffic jams.
Now we're building I-24 MOTION: 6 miles of dense instrumentation on I-24 in Nashville, TN, to study traffic dynamics and the control of traffic using automated vehicles.
The I-24 MOTION project is being conducted along with the Tennessee Department of Transportation. In 2022, the highway will be instrumented with 43 roadside camera poles holding nearly 300 4K-resolution cameras. These video feeds will be processed into anonymized vehicle trajectories that capture the time and position of individual vehicles continuously across the roadway. This anonymous vehicle data will unlock new research and better understandings of how we drive and interract with autonomated vehicles. I-24 MOTION will also be an experimental environment for automated vehicles, traffic control, and congestion mitigation, since it gives us an unparalleled ability to understand the effects on the entire roadway.
In collaboration with the Southwest Research Institute, we are developing an AI-based decision support tool that will be used for corridor management on I-24.
Undergraduate student Nicole Gloudemans presented her work from this summer and fall at the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Fair on September 19th. Nikki's presentation highlighted the custom 6-camera mount she designed, prototyped, and tested this summer to advance the lab's computer vision research efforts.
