Construction zones represent some of the most dangerous stretches of road in the country, with heightened risks of crashes and deaths. Autonomous vehicles may initially heighten the risks for occupants and construction crews alike, as their sensors attempt to navigate through ever-changing traffic patterns, inconsistent lane markings, and crowds of orange barrels—it’s one of the toughest artificial-intelligence tasks that autonomous cars will have to learn. But a new demonstration is showing that autonomous technology also holds the potential to keep construction crews safer, almost immediately.
Officials with the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) showed off that potential earlier this month, unveiling an impact-protection vehicle designed to provide a buffer between workers and traffic in construction zones. Ordinarily, such vehicles are driven by workers who are in turn susceptible to being injured in crashes. But autonomous operation would allow them to be removed from harm’s way.
“What I care about is a future with a vision of vehicles that don’t crash, and in particular don’t crash into a vehicle that has one of our men or women in it,” CDOT director Shailen Bhatt said while showcasing the autonomous protection vehicle in Fort Collins, Colorado. “Everybody is excited by connected and autonomous vehicles. This is not a Tesla—you won’t order one of these. But my prediction is all state DOTs will soon use technologies like this.”
For all the hype about autonomous vehicles providing passengers the chance to read books or fall asleep in futuristic transportation pods, the Colorado project provides fresh reminders that autonomous tech actually comes in a variety of applications, many of which are already reaching the road.
The impact-protection vehicle isn’t part of a pilot project or a pure demonstration; it’s being melded into CDOT’s everyday work amid a department-wide push to develop and deploy technology that will curb crashes and fatalities. In the fall of 2016, the department helped Otto, an Uber subsidiary, test a fully driverless truck along Interstate 25.
Kratos Defense and Security Solutions of San Diego, a provider of technology for the defense industry, developed the autonomous system behind the impact-protection vehicle, borrowing from nearly identical technology already used in the U.S. Army for automated Humvee convoys and control algorithms used in the company’s drones. Unlike most of the autonomous systems sprouting up in the auto industry, this one eschews the use of lidar and camera-based sensors, instead relying on GPS for location information and radar for detecting obstacles.
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“It [follows at] plus or minus four inches relative to the path of the leader vehicle. That’s extremely accurate.”
— Maynard Factor, Kratos
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“It’s essentially designed to mimic the path of a leader vehicle and follow right behind it,” says Maynard Factor, director of business development at Kratos. “One of the key aspects is our accuracy. It’s plus or minus four inches relative to the path of the leader vehicle. That’s extremely accurate.”
Rather than build brand-new, purpose-built vehicles from scratch, Kratos developed self-driving kits that can be installed on existing impact-protection vehicles, which makes it easier for cash-strapped DOTs or other interested entities to consider adopting the technology without facing a financial prospect of replacing entire fleets of trucks. Aside from a switch that enables autonomous mode on the dashboard, they’re visually indistinguishable from ordinary impact-protection trucks.
In Colorado, the trucks will operate at low speeds, about 7 mph or less, according to Factor, though the systems have worked in their military applications at speeds as high as 65 mph. Distance between the lead vehicle and its autonomous follower can be customized for each prospective customer.
Kratos already has worked with transportation departments in other countries in developing the equipment for construction zones, and he sees similar use cases for the base technology for trucks moving goods around shipyards and loading zones. In Colorado, Bhatt foresees ways to use similar tech to protect state troopers while they conduct crash investigations or work alongside the road.
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“What I care about is a future with a vision of vehicles
that don’t crash, and in particular don’t crash into a vehicle that has one of our men or women in it.”
—Shailen Bhatt, Colorado DOT
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“I know there are people that are concerned about automation and what it means for the future, but these are actually jobs we want to get people out of,” Bhatt said. “We’ve had state troopers killed the last couple of years on our highways, and is there a way to use these trucks to help them out? I hope so. So there are multiple facets of how we can save lives with these technologies.”
In the past four years, CDOT has logged 26 crashes in which a vehicle has struck a human-driven impact-protection vehicle. Between 2000 and 2014, the state registered 21,898 crashes and 171 fatalities in work zones, although the state didn’t have data available on how many of those killed were workers. There are about 12 crash-related fatalities every week in construction zones across the country, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
Federal lawmakers are examining new legislation that would pave the way for the widespread introduction of autonomous vehicles on U.S. roads, largely on the promise that self-driving technology can reduce traffic deaths. Autonomous impact-protection vehicles represent one novel approach to doing just that.
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