AVTCT - Automated Vehicle Traffic Control Tower

Phase 1 (December 2017 - november 2018):

The goal of the project's pre study phase was to understand the role of a traffic control tower (TCT) for automated road vehicles (AVs). Such a control tower will be used for control and operations on vehicle, fleet and traffic levels, which all will be affected by the introduction of automated and driverless vehicles. In a joint effort by the Integrated Transport Research Lab and industry this project sought to accelerate the research on a platform supporting the supervision, control and management of AV’s. In this study, gaps, barriers, and potential different scenarios were identified.

Conclusions from the preliminary study

One conclusion from the preliminary study is that the Control Tower will play an important role in the development of an automated transport system in the short, medium and long term. There are many expectations and tasks for the AVTCT, including remote control of vehicles, vehicle fleet management, and assisting vehicles in determining which roads the vehicles are allowed to drive on. Several types of control towers will be needed, depending on the objectives of different actors (e.g vehicle manufacturers, vehicle owners, road maintenance, traffic management) that can work together in an ecosystem. This ecosystem can be seen as an application of "system of systems".

Project partners for phase 1: Integrated Transport Research Lab at KTH (coordinator), Mobile Services Lab at KTH, Asta Zero, Carmenta.

More information about phase 1 can be found here

Phase 2 (april 2019 - december 2021)

Following in the footsteps of our successful preliminary study, the Automated Vehicle Traffic Control Tower (AVTCT) Phase 2 continues the development of the testbed initiated in the pre-study phase. The development of the control tower testbed starts from the research results of the AVTCT1 pre-study project and aims at achieving an end-to-end cross-layer testbed featuring both physical and virtual components. Moreover, academic research will utilize this testbed to increase the knowledge about how a control tower can improve the safety, efficiency and effectiveness of automated vehicles.

The focus of this phase of the project includes:

• The architecture of a system with automated vehicles and one or several control towers, including responsibilities and information flows.
• Investigating the requirements on cellular connectivity, computational infrastructure, and sensors in the traffic tower environment, in order to guarantee the performance of the AVTCT operation
• Increasing knowledge about human interaction with the system at different levels and for different tasks, by utilizing the testbed for experiments and simulation.
• The role of Traffic control tower within the transportation system.