Preventing Autonomous Vehicle Crashes: Eagle Researchers Search for Solutions

Embry-Riddle researchers are working on a solution to a significant safety problem involving semi-autonomous vehicles after crashes occurred when the vehicles did not detect firetrucks or police cars in the roadway. Partnering with the Emergency Responder Safety Institute and a private company called HAAS Alerts, Scott Parr, assistant professor of Civil Engineering, and Patrick Currier, associate professor and associate chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department, plan to employ digital signals to alert the autonomous vehicles (AVs) of the presence of emergency response vehicles. The plan would effectively employ emergency vehicle location signals -- now provided by HAAS Alerts to route mapping applications whenever a geolocation device mounted to the lighting bar of emergency vehicles is activated -- and extend them to also communicate with AVs. "We're trying to demonstrate that this technology does work and that it can be a solution to the problem," said Parr, adding that a response system to the alerts will be manually programmed into AVs owned by Embry-Riddle as a demonstration. The system would enact an automatic protocol to slow or stop the AV depending on how close it was to the emergency vehicle.