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UC Berkeley-Audi Pact Places
Smart-Engine Research on Bay Area Roads
A new partnership between the German automaker Audi and California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH), a statewide program housed at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley, will place high-tech traffic research findings directly into a prototype vehicle that will navigate through selected highway and arterial routes in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The project, "AudiStreets," part of Audi's "Clean Air, A Viable Planet" initiative, seeks to learn how traffic information can positively impact the environment, traffic safety and traffic congestion. It will synthesize data and research in the areas of traffic data collection, emissions- and fuel-consumption-based navigation and "smart engine" controls to turn an Audi vehicle into a working prototype of the ultimate traffic- and fuel-smart car.
The project will incorporate data on traffic signals, road conditions, vehicle velocity, terrain grade and traffic congestion conditions, creating a composite of information from which smart engine controls can choose the safest, most fuel-efficient speeds and routes.
PATH researchers will collect and synthesize data and apply it to smart engine controls; project partners at UC Riverside will focus on navigation issues. Audi is providing the research vehicle and the Palo Alto-based Audi Electronics Research Laboratory is providing computational and interface hardware. The AudiStreets team expects the 29-month project to yield extensive and demonstrable research results that can be extrapolated beyond the Bay Area, and, ultimately, applied to bring car technology further into the future.
The proposed research area comprises a 34-mile segment of I-880 between Oakland and Milpitas, as well as some adjacent highways, including State Routes 82, 237 and 185, and surface streets. The network was designed to reflect the diversity of traffic congestion and real driving options faced by Bay Area drivers so that the solutions developed reflect actual Bay Area traffic conditions.
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PATH is a collaboration between the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the University of California, other public and private academic institutions, and private industry. PATH's mission: applying advanced technology to increase highway capacity and safety, and to reduce traffic congestion, air pollution, and energy consumption.
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