Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for SAFTE: Convergent Team Development for Safe Autonomous Future Transportation Engineering (SAFTE)

工程研究中心规划奖助金竞赛是作为ERC计划的试点征集活动进行的。计划拨款并不是整个ERC竞赛的一部分，而是为了在团队之间建立能力，以计划集中的、中心规模的工程研究。自动驾驶汽车(AVs)激发了新的城市景观、交通模式的广泛变化和能源效率的愿景。人们越来越期望AVS能够在几乎没有人工协助和干预的情况下安全地处理事件和情况。随着AVs变得越来越普遍，在实验室之外，AVs应该符合社会规范，并改善日常生活。该项目使跨学科研究中心的规划能够探索安全、自主、交通工程未来的新概念。该项目制定了创建跨学科工程、研究和教育中心的战略，并为未来安全的交通系统制定了详细的路线图。该中心的做法鼓励以更广阔的视角审视自动驾驶汽车在社会中的作用，制定有效的法规，进行城市交通规划，并进行自动驾驶汽车技术的务实示范。该中心融合了包括伦理学、法学、传播学和社会科学在内的各种视角。它探索了AVS中安全行为的技术的融合，使用例如通常由计算机科学驱动的机器智能与特定的传感器、模型和方法，以及专注于车辆系统的动力学和控制的车辆工程，通常由物理模型驱动。该中心将试验台集成到中心规模的实验平台中，以演示自动地面车辆、自动飞行器(包括多个连接的车辆)和未来的概念原型。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) inspire visions of new urban landscapes, broad changes in transportation patterns, and energy-efficiency. AVs are increasingly expected to be able to handle events and situations safely with little to no human assistance and intervention. As AVs become more commonplace, outside of the laboratory, AVs should conform to societal norms and improve daily life. This project enables the planning of a transdisciplinary research center to explore new concepts for a safe, autonomous, transportation engineering future. This project develops a strategy for creating a transdisciplinary engineering, research and education center, and developing a detailed road map for safe future transportation system. The approach for the center encourages a broader perspective for examining the role AVs in society, for developing effective regulations, for urban transportation planning, and for pragmatic demonstrations of AV technology. The center integrates various perspectives, including ethics, law, communications, and the social sciences. It explores the convergence of technologies for safe behaviors in AVs using, e.g., machine intelligence, generally driven by computer science, with specific sensors, models and methods, and vehicle engineering that has focused on vehicle systems' dynamics and controls, generally driven by physical models. The center integrates test beds into center-scale experimental platforms to demonstrate autonomous ground vehicles, autonomous aerial vehicles, including multiple connected vehicles, and future concept prototypes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.