Infrastructure For Autonomous Vehicles

Despite being in its early stages, self-driving vehicles have been increasingly implemented across the United States. But in an era where change is unpredictable, there is no safe estimation to when these vehicles will become a common part of our lives. So, it is the duty of civil engineers to prepare for this shift as soon as possible.

But before understanding the infrastructure needed for a shift, one must understand the nature of self-driving cars. Self-driving cars are programmed to make thousands of decisions at a time, from turning mechanisms to braking mechanisms. Also, the nature of the road is unpredictable, which leads to such cars needing to adapt to millions of different scenarios. Adding on to this, self-driving cars must adapt to the inherent dangers of driving, which may lead to ethical dilemmas during unavoidable accidents. If there are certain dangers that these cars cannot avoid, how do we reduce these dangers?

One way is creating communication between a driving environment and the car. This may mean creating signals between street lights and self-driving cars. From this, self-driving cars can anticipate the driving environment of a part of the road, and adapt to make decisions in direction and action. Also, there may be communication between weather agencies and these vehicles, which will allow for cars to adjust to wind, snow, or fog conditions. Such communications will be similar to internet communications, which means that standards will have to be set before such infrastructure can be implemented.

There is another form of infrastructure that may be easier to implement in the short term: self-driving car zones. In these zones, self-driving cars will only drive on certain routes, typically routes that are simple to drive on. With this, human drivers can be aware of self-driving cars in area, and begin to adapt to the actions of these cars. The inverse is true as well, as self-driving cars can slowly adapt to the actions of human drivers. This will allow for these cars to be slowly integrated into daily infrastructure, and while still allowing such cars to reach their intended destinations.

One place where we can see these zones are in generally enclosed communities. Places such as theme parks, college campuses, gated communities, and industrial spaces are low-speed and are have easy traffic control. From this, self-driving cars will have a low amount of scenarios to adapt to, and will be provided with a beginner-level difficulty of driving.

It is difficult to know when autonomous vehicles will be integrated into our roads, or at what scale. However, in any scenario, it is the duty of civil engineers to anticipate change. And with driver-less cars having the potential to reduce emissions and increase driver safety, civil engineers should begin to create infrastructure that will allow for the smooth integration of these cars into our society.