Cooperative Intersection Collision
Avoidance Systems (CICAS)

Cooperative Intersection Collision Avoidance Systems (CICAS) Workshop Executive Summary

December 9–10, 2004
Churchill Hotel
Washington, D.C.

Day 1

Welcome

The CICAS Workshop brought together approximately 70 State, OEMs, Federal, and contractor representatives to develop consensus on the CICAS vision, to agree on a high-level roadmap, and to establish a better understanding of how to invest funds for CICAS program activities and support. Mike Schagrin (ITS JPO, CICAS Program Manager) opened the workshop with an introduction and overview of the meeting's agenda and goals.

Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership (CAMP)

CAMP, a partnership of automobile manufacturers, provided an overview of their work to date with regard to Cooperative Intersection Collision Avoidance Systems (CICAS). CAMP has been working to develop a Concept of Operations (ConOps), requirements, specifications, and the design of a driver-vehicle interface (DVI) for CICAS. They provided a review of existing technologies, including dedicated short-range communications (DSRC). The scope of CAMP's ICA effort led them to develop seven models or concepts of how ICA could be implemented, ranging from infrastructure only to vehicle only options with combinations of the options as intermediate positions.

Rajiv Gupta, Rich Keeling, Ron Heft, and Michael Maile summarized the OEM viewpoint. Of the seven scenarios, CAMP highlighted a development path using three:

• Concept 3–Infrastructure-supported; vehicle decides whether to warn driver of traffic signal and stop sign violations. This will not address gap acceptance.
• Concept 5–Vehicle and infrastructure supported, where intersection assembles a state map from vehicle- and infrastructure-supplied data; vehicle decision to warn. (The state map is a dynamic representation of each intersection and the vehicles/infrastructure conditions) This model assumes low DSRC-equipped vehicle penetration.
• Concept 6–High Penetration of DSRC-equipped vehicles, intersection-supported, vehicle decision to warn and the vehicle assembles state map.

A CAMP phased deployment would include:

• Phase 1–Concept 3 for stop sign and signal violation
• Phase 2–Concept 5, which would incorporate Concept 3 with the addition of functionality for gap acceptance
• Phase 3–Concept 6

CAMP described ongoing research on the Driver Vehicle Interface (DVI).

• People are observed in non-normal driving situations.
• Some warning icons have been developed.
• Brake pulse and directional seat vibration have shown promise.

CAMP discussed the technical issues that will need to be solved. For Concept 3, there is a controller interface risk with legacy controllers. This equipment may not be able to interoperate with CICAS. The evolution to Concept 5/6 assumes that Concept 3 issues are resolved. In addition, Concept 5/6 requires affordable real-time sensors, but they are currently expensive.

Among the issues raised by the audience were:

• How are pedestrians accounted for in a vehicle-based system?
• How are infrastructure and vehicle warnings harmonized?
• How does ICA affect driver decision-making in the "Dilemma Zone"?
• How does the system deter or restrain willful violators?

U. S. DOT and State-Sponsored Research

Gene McHale covered relevant research being done by the universities and other research organizations. Morris Oliver presented a summary of the common threads in the state DOT presentations.

• The states want to add legacy systems to the challenge of any ICA work.
• All states present came to agreement that infrastructure only was a necessary precursor to cooperative systems

U. S. DOT Vision

Mike Schagrin presented the U. S. DOT vision for the CICAS program; it included the following:

• Conduct a research, systems integration and development program with a substantive product
• Establish a cooperative system addressing all four problem areas by 2009
• Establish the violation countermeasure first, but develop the gap acceptance countermeasure in parallel
• Employ technology that is close to being production ready
• Work in cooperation with the Vehicle Integration Initiative (VII), especially for field testing
• Push the full range of countermeasures

Breakout Session #1: The CICAS Vision and Evolutionary Path

Workshop attendees added detail to the U. S. DOT vision and outlined the intermediate milestones between 2005 and 2009 for the four problem areas.

Day 2

CAMP Review

CAMP reviewed its concepts in detail with the expectation that participants could overlay the requirements for the infrastructure portion of CICAS on CAMP's vehicle-based vision. However, the workshop participants decided that an infrastructure-centric model similar to the CAMP model needed to be created first and then reconciled with CAMP.

Research topics that the audience wants addressed over the next two years

• Human Factors–Where is the warning coming from? How effective is the warning? What are the unintended consequences of the warning?
• Naturalistic behaviors of drivers
• DSRC performance in different situations
• Type and quality of information needed by the system
• Pedestrian and bicycle issues
• Comprehensive understanding of gap acceptance issues
• Consequences of failure in different parts of the system. Liability?
• Signal controller interfaces: legacy and future
• System level requirements
• CICAS goal consistency with national traffic safety goals
• Unified set of DIIs that are MUTCD compliant
• Engaging stakeholders
• Methods to compute benefits
• Need for surrogate safety measures

Breakout Session #2: Research Needs
Brainstorming Session: Environmental Scan

Participants listed and prioritized the research needs to develop CICAS. In addition, a brainstorming session was held to determine system/technology and environmental/institutional factors for both market/private and government/public.

Next steps:

• Next workshop: February 17–18, 2005
• The Infrastructure Consortium will craft an infrastructure evolutionary path, reach consensus, and work with CAMP to consolidate into a unified, comprehensive evolutionary path. Gary Allen and VDOT have agreed to lead this effort.
• The vehicle/infrastructure combined evolutionary path will be purely conceptual at this time.
• The USDOT requires a first draft high-level concept of operations and functional requirements, as well as a system architecture.