Setting out the ITS stall at Pittsburgh plenary

Yesterday’s Opening Plenary saw Google’s Chris Urmson give the keynote address and ITS America announcing the winners of its 2015 Best of ITS Awards.
June 2, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
Google’s Chris Urmson

Yesterday’s Opening Plenary saw 1691 Google’s Chris Urmson (pictured) give the keynote address and ITS America announcing the winners of its 2015 Best of ITS Awards. Urmson told the packed auditorium that Americans collectively waste the equivalent of 162 lifetimes every day while stuck in traffic, creating a need for Google’s self-driving car.

He also said that test drivers were told that the prototype vehicle they were in could fail at any point yet started to trust the tech after just 15 minutes. Soon they were relaxed enough to enjoy the opportunity to do other things while traveling.

He also told of the difficulties in developing reliable systems to detect the world around them, including cyclists’ hand signals and knowing the difference between the flashing lights on a police car and those on a school bus. However, he said there remains the need to recognise anomalous situations that might arise – including a duck running around the road pursued by a lady in a mobility scooter.

Afterwards, The Best of ITS Awards presentation recognised projects that demonstrate specific and measurable outcomes and exemplified innovation by establishing a ‘new dimension of performance.

Oregon DOT won the Best New Innovative Products, Services or Applications award for its ‘OR 217 Active Traffic Management’ for implementing ITS including as queue warning, variable advisory speed signs and grip sensors to counter some 200 accidents per year.

The Sustainability and Transportation award honoured Utah DOT’s ‘Winter Road Weather Index’ project while 378 Cubic Transportation Systems and the Chicago Transit Authority took the Partnership Deployment award for its ‘Chicago Transit Authority Ventura Update: Open and Loving It’ project. 213 Qualcomm Technologies and 5400 Honda R&D Americas won the Research, Design and Innovation award for their ‘DSRC-based-Vehicleto- Pedestrian and Other Vulnerable Road User Safety Project.’

ITS America’s President and CEO, Regina Hopper said: “These companies are moving the industry forward and proving that they will improve our quality of life.”

Related Content

  • January 15, 2015
    Google in talks with world car makers on autonomous cars
    Google has begun discussions with most of the world's top automakers and has assembled a team of traditional and non-traditional suppliers to speed up efforts to bring self-driving cars to market by 2020, a top Google executive has said. Those manufacturers are said to include General Motors, Ford Motor, Toyota, Daimler and Volkswagen. "We'd be remiss not to talk to ... the biggest auto manufacturers. They've got a lot to offer," Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car project, said in an
    Read More
  • May 18, 2015
    Green light for Google self-driving vehicle prototypes
    Google has announced the next step in its autonomous vehicle program and is about to begin testing its new prototype self-driving vehicles on public roads. This summer, the company will move its cars from the test track to the roads with safety drivers aboard. The company has been rigorously testing the cars at its test facilities for several years. The new prototypes are based on the company’s existing fleet of self-driving Lexus RX450h SUVs, which has logged nearly a million autonomous miles and recen
    Read More
  • August 26, 2014
    ITS America Announces 2014 Best of ITS Awards Finalists
    ITS America has announced the list of finalists for the 2014 Best of ITS Awards, the highly competitive program which recognises the most innovative projects and influential achievements in the high-tech transportation community. Finalists will be recognised, and the winners announced, during the ITS America Awards Breakfast session at the 21st World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, Tuesday, September 9, 2014 from 7:30 to 8:30am at the Cobo Center in Detroit, Michigan. The Best of ITS Awards rec
    Read More
  • May 8, 2015
    Low-costs solutions to improve pedestrian safety
    David Crawford welcomes low-cost safety initiatives for pedestrians in America. Some 10 people die each week in accidents on crosswalks in the US, that’s more than 10% of all pedestrian fatalities in road traffic incidents - the number of which is running at a five-year high. Ensuring crosswalks are safe is key in supporting the growing enthusiasm for walking as a travel mode. In the last decade of the 20th century, numbers walking to work in the US fell by 26%; while, as recently as 2012, Americans were e
    Read More

Highlighted Content