Event Type: Seminar

Among a number of approaches for in-vehicle routing, there are two groups that are rather accessible to both academia and practitioners. One is independent routing, which simply disseminates the information of instantaneous traffic conditions of an interested network to equipped vehicles, and expects each driver to independently make his/her own route choice. The second is systemic routing, which collects all drivers’ origin-destination information for a centralized decision unit to systemically make an overall route decision for all involved vehicles. It is well known that independent routing leads to selfish routing and results in oscillating traffic conditions in the network, while systemic routing is for the best interest of the whole network, but not necessarily individual vehicles. Moreover, the computational load in the second approach is too high to be feasible for a real application. To address the dilemma between the above two groups of approaches, this study proposes a novel coordinated online in-vehicle routing mechanism (CRM), assuming that smart vehicles are equipped with wireless communication and local computation facilities.

The proposed CRM models the routing decision process of a group of smart vehicles as a mixed strategy routing game, in which smart vehicles decide their own online route choice priorities by a negotiation and coordination process with other smart vehicles. A discrete choice model is employed to counter for drivers’ behaviors. This study shows the existence of an equilibrium coordinated routing decision for the mixed-strategy routing game. Furthermore, a simultaneously updating distributed algorithm is proposed to implement the CRM. The convergence of the distributed algorithm to the equilibrium routing decision is proved, assuming that individual smart vehicles are selfish players seeking to minimize their own travel times. Numerical experiments conducted based on the Sioux Falls city network indicate that the proposed distributed algorithm converges quickly under different smart vehicle penetration levels; thus it possesses great potential for online applications. Moreover, the proposed coordinated routing mechanism outperforms the traditional independent selfish-routing mechanism; it reduces the travel times for both the overall system and individual vehicles, which represents the core idea of Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Dr. Du is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Before joining IIT, she worked as a Post-doctoral Research Associate for NEXTRANS, the USDOT Region V Regional University Transportation Center at Purdue University, from 2008 to 2012. She received her Ph.D. degree in Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems with a minor in Operations Research and Statistics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2008. Dr. Du’s research is characterized by applying operations research, network modeling and statistical methods into transportation system analysis and network modeling. Dr. Du’s current research covers several interdisciplinary research areas in Transportation Engineering, such as Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Systems, Interdependent Infrastructure Network Modeling, Sustainable Multimodal Transportation Systems, Optimization and Data fusion Applications in Traffic Flow Analysis, and so on. Dr. Du’s research articles have appeared in several major transportation journals, including Transportation Research Part B, Transportation Research Part C, IEEE Transactions on ITS, Networks and Spatial Economics, etc . Dr. Du’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (including a CAREER award), Illinois Department of Transportation, and the University Transportation Research Center. Her recent project “Driverless City” won the First Nayar Prize at IIT. Dr. Du is currently a member of the Transportation Research Board Committee on Transportation Network Modeling (ADB30) and serves on the editorial board for this committee. She is also on the editorial board of the International Journal of Business Analytics.

While driving on your favorite route to your destination, have you ever wondered why the technology you are seeing as far as traffic management is concerned is so antiquated? My answer to that is the people and organization that manage the traffic are not “cyber-physicists” nor “real-time optimizers”. MIDAS hopes to demonstrate the synergistic use of a cyber-physical infrastructure consisting of smart-phone type devices; cloud computing, wireless communication, and intelligent transportation systems to manage vehicles in the complex urban network – through the use of traffic controls, route advisories and road pricing/rewards – to jointly optimize drivers’ mobility as well as achieve the sustainability goals of reducing energy usage and improving air quality. A key element of MIDAS-CPS is the real-time streaming data collection and data analysis and the subsequent traffic management through proactive traffic controls and advisories, through visualizations of predicted queues ahead, effective road prices/rewards, and route advisories. Although drivers will not be forced to use recommended routes, it is anticipated that MIDAS-CPS would lead to lesser drive stress and improved road safety, besides the designed benefits on the environment, energy consumption, congestion mitigation, and driver mobility. This talk will only focus on overall architecture of MIDAS and on the proactive traffic management component, while the sponsored multidisciplinary NSF project is at the cutting edge in several areas: real-time image processing, real-time traffic prediction and supply/demand management, and data processing/management through cloud computing.

Dr. Pitu B. Mirchandani [BS/MS degrees in Engineering, UCLA; S.M/ScD. Degrees, Operations Research, MIT] is a Professor of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU) where he holds the AVNET Chair for Supply Chain Networks. Pitu Mirchandani has been studying Dynamic Stochastic Networks for close to 40 years, with interests in models and systems for making strategic/tactical/operational decisions in dynamic and stochastic networked environments. Mirchandani’s contributions are in: (1) Location Decision Modeling, (2) Traveler and Vehicle Routing Models, (3) Real-time Data-Driven Decision Systems, and (4) general theoretical contributions to OR modeling, methods and algorithms. Professor Mirchandani has authored/co-authored four books and approximately 200 articles, and he has been a principal investigator on many research programs. Dr. Mirchandani is a lifetime member of IEEE and a Fellow of INFORMS.

Alternative energy vehicles, including Fuel Cell, Battery Electric and Plug In Hybrid technologies, require substantial infrastructure support for rapid dissemination in the market place. This seminar describes the main characteristics of the Hyundai Fuel Cell and PHEV models, and addresses some of the challenges related to the fueling and charging network available for these vehicles.

Mircea Gradu, Ph.D., joined Hyundai Motor America in May 2014 as Director of Engineering and Quality. Gradu leads the development and implementation of product strategy to improve both the initial quality of Hyundai models and vehicle durability. Gradu has more than 23 years of automotive experience, most recently serving as Vice President and Head of Transmission Powertrain and Driveline Engineering for Chrysler Group LLC. Gradu’s distinguished career includes being the recipient of the 2008 Edward Cole Award for Automotive Innovation, the 2005 Forest McFarland Award and the SAE-Timken Howard Simpson Innovation Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). Gradu was appointed SAE Fellow in 2011. Gradu was listed among the 50 most influential automotive executives in 2012 by Motor Trend. He has been awarded 56 patents on mechatronic automotive systems, and published over 40 papers. Gradu holds a Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Stuttgart, Germany and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest. He enjoys classic car driving and restoration, travel and outdoor recreation, including mountain biking, skiing and kiteboarding.

This talk tackles the problem of modeling and optimization in large-scale congested traffic networks in a holistic way with an aggregated realistic representation of traffic dynamics and route choice and multiple modes of transport. We talk about the integration of big multi-sensor data, the understanding of multimodal patterns, the coordination and optimization of urban efficiency for the travel of people. This is challenging because cities are highly complex systems. This seminar will describe methodologies to model and understand the collective behavior for different types of urban systems. It will highlight under what physical properties the aggregated laws will provide reasonable description of congestion for single- and multi-modal systems. It will also describe how to develop hierarchical feedback control and optimization tools and investigate what type of real-time active traffic management schemes (congestion pricing, vehicle restriction, large scale traffic signal control) can improve mobility measures in a city for cities of different structures. The validation of the methodologies and the traffic management schemes are conducted in various and complex city structures scenarios using data from large field experiments and detailed simulations.

Prof. Nikolas Geroliminis is an Associate Professor at EPFL and the head of the Urban Transport Systems Laboratory (LUTS). Before joining EPFL he was an Assistant Professor on the faculty of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He has a diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and a MSc and Ph.D. in civil engineering from University of California, Berkeley. He is an Associate Editor for Transportation Research part C and he also serves in the editorial board of TR, part B, part C, Journal of ITS and of many international conferences. He is a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Traffic Flow Theory Committee. His research interests focus primarily on urban transportation systems, traffic flow theory and traffic control, public transportation and logistics, Optimization and Large Scale Networks. He is a recent recipient of the ERC Starting Grant “METAFERW: Modeling and controlling traffic congestion and propagation in large-scale urban multimodal networks”

This will be an overview of current development in urban transportation management technologies. I will describe some
of the work begin done in predictive real-time operation, describe the goals of connected vehicle, examine some of
connected vehicle’s impact of transportation operation, clearing the air between automated and autonomous vehicles, and
discuss some possible impact of automation on transportation management. If I have time, I’ll also touch on some of the
new challenges advanced transportation management systems are facing and could encounter in the future. The goal of
this talk is to stimulate discussion and ideas where additional research will help.

Edward Fok is a Transportation Technology Specialist with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Technical
Service/Resource Center. He helps public agencies apply advanced transportation systems and processes to solve mobility problems.
He also helps researchers at Turner-Fairbanks and the Joint Program Office advance the state of the art in transportation operations.
Ed is very active in many technical areas including Integrate Corridor Management, Connected Vehicles, Cyber Security, Automated
Vehicles, and Advanced Freight Systems. Ed came to FHWA from the City of Los Angeles with 11 years of operations and research
experiences and holds multiple professional engineering licenses.

The annual pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) induces the gathering of millions of worshipers at the same time in the Holy shrines in and around Mecca. Tawaf, or circumambulation of the Kaa’ba, the focal point of the Grand Mosque (Haram), is the cornerstone of Hajj rituals. Another critical ritual experiencing overcrowding is the Jamarat system, which was a notorious crowd bottleneck, composed of three stone monuments, each surrounded by a ring, where pilgrims are supposed to throw pebbles in a given sequence.

The situation at the Jamarat site was highly dangerous due to the vast number of Hajjis trying to stone the pillars in a relatively short period of time and limited space. Many sad fatal accidents have occurred over the years and the area was in urgent need of development. Authorities proposed a design that offered a significant improvement to the safety of the pilgrims, replacing the one tier structure with a 4 tier structure (5 levels) and we were called for to audit such design. In order to ensure that the new Jamarat structure satisfies the required criteria of pilgrim safety during periods of overcrowding, its conceptual design was subjected to crowd modeling and simulation to test, evaluate and, when needed, modify its different design elements. The goal was to determine the capacity, throughput and performance of the proposed design.

On the other hand, the new expansion of Mecca’s Grand Mosque is supposed to increase its capacity to about threefold, and this is expected to significantly add more load on the Tawaf ritual. We assessed the Tawaf performance, and modeled a range of its site’s (court yard) configurations. This effort helped reach a final design that is currently under construction.

Modelling and simulation of crowds is a relatively new field, with early simulation models emerging in late 1980’s and the field dramatically expanded starting in late 1990’s. It can be a very useful tool in designing safe places for mass gatherings.

Professor AlGadhi’s research interests include modelling and simulation of crowd behavior and movement, transportation systems analysis, transit planning, traffic safety, and traffic flow theory; with special interest in Hajj (Pilgrimage to Mecca) crowd and transportation studies. Dr. AlGadhi, holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (Transportation) from the University of Texas at Austin (1990), M.Sc. from the University of Illinois (Urbana), and a B.Sc. from King Saud University (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia). He is a professor of civil engineering at King Saud University..

The Hajj – the great Islamic pilgrimage to Makkah, Saudi Arabia – is known to be the largest annually occurring pedestrian problem in the world with more than 3 million pilgrims each year. Pilgrims perform several religious rituals, including Ramy al-Jamarat – the stoning of the devil ritual – which is known to be particularly crowded. Until 2006, several sad crowd disasters with hundreds of casualties occurred. In the aftermath of the Hajj in 2006, several measures have been taken to improve safety and to avoid crowd disasters. One particular measure is the development of a time schedule for the pilgrims to perform the stoning ritual. In this paper, we present a model and a solution approach to the Pilgrim Scheduling Problem. The model minimizes the deviation of the scheduled stoning time from the preferred stoning time, while taking into account resource capacities (street width, for example) to avoid critical densities of pilgrims. At the same time pilgrims are assigned to routes leading to the ritual site. We solve the Pilgrim Scheduling Problem by an intelligible fix-and-optimize heuristic. Our approach has been an integral part of the planning of Hajj since 2006/2007 and no further crowd disaster has happened in the periods 2007-2014. We illustrate our work with computational results and validation data for the Hajj in 2014-

This contribution has been selected as a 2015 INFORMS Franz Edelman Award finalist (https://www.informs.org/About-INFORMS/News-Room/Press-Releases/2015-Edelman-Finalists)
* Dirk Helbing was only involved in the consultancy for the first successful implementation in 2007.

We present a general conceptual framework to explore autonomous vehicle adoption. The traffic flow implications of different adoption rates are examined using a microscopic modeling framework of mixed traffic streams in which certain fractions of the vehicles are respectively autonomous, connected or both. We jointly model the properties of the peer-to-peer communication systems for different levels of message content. The framework is used in an exploratory analysis of the flow characteristics of the resulting mixed traffic stream, with particular attention to throughput and stability.

Professor Hani S. Mahmassani is the William A. Patterson Distinguished Chair in Transportation; Director, Northwestern University Transportation Center; Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science; and Professor (courtesy), Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences, Kellogg School of Management. Professor Mahmassani specializes in multimodal transportation systems analysis, planning and operations, dynamic network modeling and optimization, transit network planning and design, dynamics of user behavior and telematics, telecommunication-transportation interactions, large-scale human infrastructure systems, and real-time operation of logistics and distribution systems.

Traffic crashes and accidents at intersections, roundabouts and roadway segments result from many complex factors, but
at a basic level, they are outcomes of the interactions among vehicles and other road users. Since few direct measurements
of these interactions are available, engineers and planners instead attempt to understand them by studying crashes and
accidents reports. As crashes account for a tiny fraction of safety conflicts, these reports fail to provide a full
understanding of what is happening at the points of accidents. This is especially true of crashes involving pedestrians and
bicycles, for which data are sparse, making it difficult to determine reliable patterns. In this talk we will present risk based
traffic safety models using multiple data streams, including near miss data, systemic data, historical traffic accidents, and
drivers’ naturalistic behavior data. We will also briefly discuss ongoing research at Rutgers on the development of
Plan4Saefty software, which is currently being used by the State of New Jersey for traffic safety analysis and planning.

Mohsen A. Jafari is a professor and Chair of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Rutgers University and is a principal at the Rutgers
Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation, where he overseas Transportation Safety Resource Center and Information
Management Group. He recently started Laboratory for Sustainable Systems (LESS) at Rutgers University. His current research
interests include control and optimization of large complex systems in transportation and energy applications. He has been principal
or co-principal to over $18.0M R&D funding from the US and international government agencies and industry. His work has led to
three patents, 118 technical articles, over 60 conference papers and 100+ invited and contributed presentations. He actively
collaborates with universities and national labs in the US and abroad. He has advised eighteen Ph.D. theses and nine post-doctoral &
research fellows. Presently, he is advising additional five Ph.D. theses. He is a member of IEEE and was recipient of the IEEE
excellence award in service and research, SAP curriculum award and two Transportation safety awards. He has been consultant to
several fortune 500 companies, and national and international government agencies.

Electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have attracted worldwide attentions because of their capabilities to improve energy and environment sustainability. However, inconvenience of charging, high cost, short driving range, and safety concerns of the battery system have hindered the mass market penetration of EVs and PHEVs. This presentation will look at studies which address some of these issues with wireless charging technology.

This presentation will focus on wireless charging technology that helps eliminate the need of carrying cables and plugging in, and offer significant improvement in convenience and electric safety for EV and PHEV charging. Although Wireless Power Transmission (WPT) has been commercialized for consumer electronics and also investigated for EV wireless charging, the size, efficiency, and cost are key obstacles that prevent WPT from widely deployed. Our research in this area aims at novel designs that can considerably reduce size and cost while increase coupling coefficient and system efficiency.

After two years of study, two designs of the magnetic-resonance WPT chargers have been developed at UM-Dearborn. Vertically layered magnetic-resonance WPT charger instead of layering all components horizontally is proposed, where the components of the magnetic-resonance WPT charger are vertically layered. When compared to the horizontal design, the vertical design will be considerably thicker, requiring a larger space for positioning.

The investigators have presented detailed designs for major structures of the magnetic-resonance WPT charger. Laboratory prototypes have been made and 8kW power transfer has been achieved over 200mm distance with up to 96.5% DC-DC efficiency, with alignment tolerance of up to 300 mm. UM is working with Mia Motors and DENSO International to develop a prototype vehicle.

Chris Mi is a fellow of IEEE, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and the Director of the US DOE funded GATE Center for Electric Drive Transportation. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, all in electrical engineering. Previously he was an Electrical Engineer with General Electric Canada Inc. He was the President and the Chief Technical Officer of 1Power Solutions, Inc. from 2008 to 2011. He is the Co-Founder of Gannon Motors and Controls LLC and Mia Motors, Inc.
His research interests are in electric and hybrid vehicles. He has taught tutorials and seminars on the subject of HEVs/PHEVs for the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the IEEE, workshops sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Society of Professional Engineers. He has delivered courses to major automotive OEMs and suppliers, including GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Hyundai, Tyco Electronics, A&D Technology, Johnson Controls, Quantum Technology, Delphi, and the European Ph.D School. He has offered tutorials in many countries, including the U.S., China, Korea, Singapore, Italy, France, and Mexico. He has published more than 100 articles and delivered 30 invited talks and keynote speeches. He has also served as a panelist in major IEEE and SAE conferences.
Dr. Mi is the recipient of “Distinguished Teaching Award” and “Distinguished Research Award” of University of Michigan Dearborn. He is a recipient of the 2007 IEEE Region 4 “Outstanding Engineer Award,” “IEEE Southeastern Michigan Section Outstanding Professional Award.” and the “SAE Environmental Excellence in Transportation (E2T) Award.” He was also a recipient of the National Innovation Award and the Government Special Allowance Award from the China Central Government. In December 2007, he became a Member of Eta Kappa Nu, which is the Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society, for being “a leader in education and an example of good moral character.”
Dr. Mi was the Chair (2008-2009) and Vice Chair (2006-2007) of the IEEE Southeastern Michigan Section. Dr. Mi was the general Chair of the 5th IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference held in Dearborn, Michigan, USA in September 6-11, 2009. Dr. Mi is one of the three Area Editors of the Editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, Senior Editor, IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, Guest Editor, International Journal of Power Electronics, Editorial Board, International Journal of Electric and Hybrid Vehicles, Editorial Board, IET Electrical Systems in Transportation, and Associate Editor of Journal of Circuits, Systems, and Computers (2007-2009). He served on the review panel for the NSF, the U.S. Department of Energy (2007–2010), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (2010), Hong Kong Research Grants Council, French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders (Belgium), and the Danish Research Council. He is the topic chair for the 2011 IEEE International Future Energy Challenge, and the General Chair for the 2013 IEEE International Future Energy Challenge. Dr. Chris Mi is a Distinguished Lecturer (DL) of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society.
He is also the General Co-Chair of IEEE Workshop on Wireless Power Transfer sponsored by PELS, IAS, IES, VTS, MAG, and PES, Editor of IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics – Special Issue on WPT, and steering committee member of the IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference (ITEC- Asian).