NeTS: Small: Collaborative Research: Connected Barriers: Vehicle to Barrier Communication and Networking for Single-Vehicle Crash Safety

今天，美国超过一半的致命车祸是“跑离道路”（RoR）车祸，路边障碍物是减轻其严重程度的最后手段。然而，未来的车辆将在几十年前设计的路边基础设施上运行。该项目旨在通过开发一种称为连接障碍（CB）的新型车辆到障碍（V2 B）通信和网络范例，在车辆和路边障碍之间建立无线连接，从而弥合这一差距。CB将（1）补充车载传感器技术和现有的物理障碍，（2）避免RoR碰撞，（3）在不可避免的情况下最大限度地减少碰撞的严重性，以及（4）帮助发展道路安全和车辆通信和网络社区之间的相互合作，这将导致强大的技术解决方案。根据交通部2014年的统计寿命估计值，每起事故的社会成本为940万美元，每年约有10，000起致命的ROR事故。随着广泛实施，该研究项目可以将致命和非致命事故率降低高达70%，仅在美国每年就可以挽救多达8，000人的生命和数十亿美元的经济损失。该项目支持2名研究生，其结果将被纳入UNL和OSU的几门课程。从项目结果的见解将有助于建立合作努力，教育双方的工业和学术界在内布拉斯加州和俄亥俄州。为了实现CB愿景，该项目探索了三条主线：（1）通过现场测量、实际车祸测试和信道模型开发中的无线信道特征分析，建立V2 B通信的基础。(2)为实现可靠的控制反应，将开发非常高保真的障碍辅助车辆定位和车辆-障碍同步解决方案。(3)将开发新的通信算法和协议，以传播有关障碍物和道路状况的周期性信息，并促进即将到来的RoR事件期间的实时信息交换，并着眼于与现有通信标准共存。开发的解决方案将通过在中西部路边安全设施的侵入和车辆碰撞实验进行评估，并与内布拉斯加州鹰村和内布拉斯加州卡斯县合作对低流量郊区和农村路段进行系统评估。最后，一个多时间尺度的仿真平台将被集成，包括无线信道，车辆和障碍物动态，交通动态，通信和网络动态的经验测量，以提供有效的评估工具的CB范式。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的，通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

More than half of fatal vehicle crashes in the US today are "run-off-road" (RoR) crashes and roadside barriers are the last means of mitigating their severity. Yet, vehicles of tomorrow are slated to operate on roadside infrastructure designed decades ago. This project aims to bridge this gap by establishing wireless connectivity between vehicles and roadside barriers by developing a novel vehicle to barrier (V2B) communication and networking paradigm called connected barriers (CBs). CBs will (1) complement on-board sensor technologies and existing physical barriers, (2) avoid RoR crashes, (3) minimize the severity of a crash when it is inevitable, and (4) help develop mutual collaborations between the roadside safety and vehicular communication and networking communities, which will lead to robust technology solutions. Based on Department of Transportation's value of a statistical life estimate in 2014, the societal cost of a crash is $9.4 million per fatality, with approximately 10,000 fatal ROR crashes each year. With widespread implementation, this research project could reduce fatal and non-fatal crash rates by up to 70%, which could save as many as 8,000 lives per year in the U.S. alone and billions of dollars in economic losses. This project supports 2 graduate students and its results will be incorporated into several courses at UNL and OSU. Insights from the project results will help establish collaborative efforts to educate both industry and academia in Nebraska and Ohio. To realize the CB vision, the project explores three main threads: (1) the foundations of V2B communication will be established through analysis of wireless channel characteristics in field measurements, actual car-crash tests, and channel model development. (2) to enable reliable control reactions, very high-fidelity barrier-assisted vehicle localization and vehicle-barrier synchronization solutions will be developed. (3) novel communication algorithms and protocols will be developed to disseminate periodic information about barrier and road conditions, and to facilitate real-time information exchange during upcoming RoR events, with an eye towards coexistence with existing communication standards. The developed solutions will be evaluated through encroachment and vehicle crash experiments in the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility, and system evaluations on low-volume suburban and rural road segments in collaboration with the Village of Eagle, Nebraska, and Nebraska's Cass County. Finally, a multi-time-scale simulation platform will be integrated by including empirical measurements of the wireless channel, vehicle and barrier dynamics, traffic dynamics, and communication and network dynamics to provide effective evaluation tools of the CB paradigmThis 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.