Smart ideas on blockchain or AI? Call FHWA!

The US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is calling for new ideas about how to use blockchain technology and artificial intelligence (AI) for the benefit of transportation.
By Adam Hill February 21, 2020 Read time: 1 min
FHWA thinks blockchain has possibilities (© Siarhei Yurchanka | Dreamstime.com)

FHWA put out a so-called broad agency announcement (BAA), saying that it intends to award contracts to research projects “that could lead to transformational changes and truly revolutionary advances in highway engineering and intermodal surface transportation in the US”.

In particular it thinks blockchain “has the potential to transform the connected and automated vehicle industry” by creating a platform to share vehicle and infrastructure data securely.
 
“With the advent of high speed wireless technology, services for highway transportation based on blockchain technology could provide security and scalability at lower costs than current private network solutions or could provide novel functions that solve needs that technologies currently used in highway transportation do not,” the BAA says.

FHWA is looking for blockchain-related proposals which examine real-time communication for connected vehicle applications, road pricing and geofencing roadway segments.

When it comes to AI in transportation, the agency would be interested in areas such as integrating traditional and non-traditional highway data to better explain and predict system performance and improving sensor signal data to assess current conditions of pavements.

Interested parties can register here. Closing date for submissions is 20 March.
 

Networking & Communication Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Communication: the future of machine vision
    May 30, 2013
    Jason Barnes asks leading machine vision industry figures what they consider to be the educational barriers to the technology’s increased uptake by the ITS sector. The recent rush by some organisations within the ITS sector to associate themselves with the term ‘machine vision’ underlines just how important the technology has become in a relatively short space of time. However, despite the technology having been applied in certain traffic management applications for some years, there remains a significant s
    Read More
  • Funding shortfall for US Interstate upgrades
    May 11, 2012
    Andrew Bardin Williams investigates tolling on the federal Interstate system as maintenance and upgrade requirements increasingly outpace funding The I-95 corridor through North Carolina is one of the most heavy trafficked interstates in the US, seeing upwards of 46,000 vehicles per day in some stretches-and North Carolina’s Department of Transportation (NCDOT) estimates this number will to rise to 98,000 vehicles per day by 2040. Along with the rest of the federal interstate system, the North Carolina str
    Read More
  • ITS advancement lays beyond benefit-cost analysis
    May 29, 2013
    Shelley Row, former Director of the US Department of Transportation’s ITS Joint Program Office, gives her views on the way forward for the industry. We, as intelligent transportation system (ITS) proponents and engineers, tend to be overly fixated on benefit-cost data. We want decisions to be made on logical grounds for which benefit-cost calculations are optimal. While benefit-cost data is necessary, it is not always sufficient. We can learn from our history where we see three broad groups of ITS deploymen
    Read More
  • Arup’s vision of urban mobility in 2050
    May 6, 2015
    Arup’s vision of the Future of Highways considers a wide range of factors that will impact on mobility towards the middle of the century. In its consideration of the Future of Highways through to 2050, international consultants Arup has taken a broad and pragmatic view of where society is heading and the effects that will have on the transport requirements. In terms of major drivers it not only cites
    Read More

Highlighted Content