PATH Receives Grant to Research Cooperative Driving Automation

March 3, 2022

Xiao-Yun LuCalifornia Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology (PATH) Research Engineer and Berkeley Lab Affiliated Scientist Xiao-Yun Lu recently received funding from the Department of Energy's Vehicle Technologies Office for research focusing on Cooperative Driving Automation (CDA).

“PATH is leading the way in cooperative automation research and this will allow us to work with a larger group and expand our capabilities to reduce energy consumption and traffic congestion with CDA aplications,” says Project PI Lu.

Project partners include National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and American Center for Mobility.

The grant is part of $209 million in funding for 26 new laboratory projects focusing on electric vehicles, advanced batteries and connected vehicles. Berkeley Lab received $13 million. Advanced, lithium-based batteries play an integral role in 21st century technologies such as electric vehicles, stationary grid storage, and defense applications that will be critical to securing America’s clean energy future.

“This funding will continue our groundbreaking research on cooperative driving, which develops automated vehicle technologies and operational strategies to minimize energy use and decrease traffic congestion on our roadways,” said Tom Kirchstetter, director of Berkeley Lab’s Energy Analysis & Environmental Impacts Division.

Project Title: Improved Mobility and Energy Savings Through Optimization of CDA Application in Signal Controls for Arterial Mixed Traffic Scenarios

Project Objectives

  • Evaluate the current state-of-the-art in Cooperative Driving Automation (CDA) research, development, and practice.
  • Define the communications requirements to implement optimal CDA applications including V2V, V2I, I2V and I2I.
  • Develop the hardware, software, algorithms, and/or methods to implement specific applications of CDA for one or more CDA Classes using the facilities of American Center for Mobility. This would allow us to quantitatively evaluate the energy consumption and mobility.
  • Conduct extensive test of the CDA strategy including the communication architecture.
  • Quantify the energy impacts of CDA application and the sensitivity analysis of these impacts to different communications requirements and architectures and market penetration levels of CDA vehicles through simulation of larger network traffic with both freeway and arterial corridors.