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Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems (IVHS) improve the operation of cars and trucks on public roads by combining information technology with road transportation technologies. The basic ideas about IVHS are by no means new but a number of converging forces have encouraged significant IVHS development in North America recently. Based on the results of a Delphi survey to project realistic future scenarios, both applied and fundamental research agenda are being formulated in a Michigan-based IVHS program to push the IVHS technologies for advanced motorist information systems and for backup vehicle controls under emergency conditions. The scope of the research agenda includes social/human elements as well as hardware and software technological systems. The Michigan research program is expected to contribute to the development of IVHS in North America, both technically and institutionally.

Individual road users face a variety of information needs that are met only in some limited way during conventional highway travel. This paper proposes the vision of a technology whose sole purpose is to improve highway travel by introducing into the system intelligent functions which deal with the limitations existing in today's “autonomous” mode of using the highway. Covered in this paper are issues that can be comprehensively addressed by Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems (IVHS) such as 1.) the individual driver's need for information, 2.) the individual driver's need for active assistance, 3.) communal needs for new functionality, and 4.) the whole system effects.

An open-loop limit-maneuver test methodology was refined from an earlier study which hypothesized a relationship between vehicle performance and highway safety. Refinements in methodology were attained in the areas of test apparatus, test procedure, data processing, and performance interpretation. Open-loop response measurements were conducted on a representative sample of 12 contemporary passenger vehicles. Numeric characterizations of performance are presented, indicating the range and distribution of response properties exhibited by the vehicle sample.

In spite of significant forces pushing for an accelerated development of Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems (IVHS) in the United States, no formal national program in IVHS is emerging rapidly. It appears that a number of policy issues, both at the macro and at the micro levels, both domestic and international, need to be resolved before IVHS can be put into place in America. The way in which these issues are to be resolved will probably have significant impacts on both the automotive industry and the infrastructure that supports automotive transportation around the world.

The Metropolitan Transportation Center (MTC) is an operational unit of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). The MTC is the focal point of Michigan's leadership role in the Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems (IVHS) technology. The MTC serves as a traffic operations service center and an IVHS test facility. The MTC facility now under construction and the functions to be performed within the MTC will be described. The infrastructure being developed to expand the existing traffic management in the Detroit Metropolitan area and the testbed program will be described. Specific emphasis will be placed on describing the first project of the testbed in which both the public and private sectors will be able to participate in the evaluation of various surveillance technologies and in-car communications. Initial efforts will address the “low end” users community by testing multiple incident detection and management techniques.