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The concept of the intelligent Vehicle/Highway System (IVHS) is a direct descendent of earlier work on “roadway automation”. Recent advances in a variety of technologies have now made automatic control of the operation of road vehicles a much more realistic proposition than it was even in the recent past. This paper begins by identifying three stages in the likely evolution of these advanced vehicle control systems (AVCS), showing how AVCS is related to the other IVHS functions. The technological elements of AVCS, corresponding to needed research and technology development work, are then described. The current international state of the art in these technologies is reviewed, and the paper concludes with a discussion of an evolutionary progression that could be followed to lead from present-day driving to the long-term concept of an automated freeway network.

Highway automation technologies have been proposed in an attempt to ameliorate the urban problem of congestion and, to a lesser extent, air pollution. The methodology developed to analyze the impacts of an automated highway system in the Southern California region in 2025 is addressed in this paper. An automated highway system scenario is selected from several alternatives based on sensitivity analyses that allow for variability in network location, total network miles, and market penetration of vehicles equipped with automation features.

The development of a robust, unified systems architecture is an important problem in IVHS technology. This paper presents a sketch of a general architectural framework within which IVHS systems can carry out a wide range of management and control functions. The most important aspect of the work reported here is the definition of two parallel and compatible architectures suitable in the first case for ATMS and ATIS functions, where the driver controls the vehicle, and in the second case for AVCS functions, where the vehicle is under automatic control.

Although the concept of roadway automation has been in the public eye for nearly fifty years and it has now been thirty years since the first test track demonstrations of some of the requisite technologies, virtually no progress has yet been made toward implementation. This paper explains why it is worth re-examining roadway automation now in light of current transportation needs and technological progress. The main body of the paper outlines the technical questions that need to be answered in order to make roadway automation a reality, based on the nine functions of an automated roadway system: 1. Intelligent traffic signalling, 2. traffic information systems, 3. driver warning and assistance, 4. automatic steering control, 5. automatic spacing control, 6. obstacle avoidance, 7. automatic trip routing and scheduling, 8. control of merging of streams of traffic, 9. transitioning to and from automatic control.