Toward a Science of Autonomy for Physical Systems: Transportation

Transportation systems are currently being transformed by advances in information and communication technologies. The development of autonomous transportation holds the promise of providing revolutionary improvements in speed, efficiency, safety and reliability along with concomitant benefits for society and economy. It is anticipated these changes will soon affect household activity patterns, public safety, supply chains and logistics, manufacturing, and quality of life in general. Development of autonomous transportation systems is proceeding with breathtaking speed, and these systems will continue to progress in maturity, robustness, trustworthiness, and usability. While future projections vary drastically, most automotive companies expect vehicles with combined function automation to be a reality by 2020 and IEEE projects that by 2040 about 75% of all vehicles will be autonomous 2 , with the potential of $1 trillion in annual savings and up to 1 gigaton of reduced carbon emissions due to shared, electrified, and autonomous vehicles 3. Regardless of the precise numbers, there will undoubtedly be benefits and advantages in safety, convenience, energy, sustainability, supply chains, land use and public transportation as detailed below 4. Improved safety: Modern transportation systems engineering has successfully reduced much of the risk from technical failures. At the same time we have witnessed in recent years a