PTV takes lessons from logistics software to help test AV behaviour

Some people in the transportation industry may be reluctant to treat travellers as goods that need to be shipped from point A to point B. The traffic software engineers at PTV Group are not some of those people. According to Jongsun Won, the lessons he and his colleagues have learned from years of creating logistics software are extremely useful in the new age of autonomous vehicles. “In an autonomous vehicle, people are essentially the goods that are being transported around a city,” Won said. “There are
June 7, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
© F11photo | Dreamstime.com
Some people in the transportation industry may be reluctant to treat travellers as goods that need to be shipped from point A to point B. The traffic software engineers at 3264 PTV Group are not some of those people. According to Jongsun Won, the lessons he and his colleagues have learned from years of creating logistics software are extremely useful in the new age of autonomous vehicles.


“In an autonomous vehicle, people are essentially the goods that are being transported around a city,” Won said. “There are definite lessons to be learned as cities try to figure out how driverless cars are going to behave.”

PTV gives cities a platform they can use to test out different traffic scenarios, so they can identify potential problem areas such as congested intersections and merge lanes. One thing that transportation officials are interested in today, is how autonomous vehicles are going to change traffic patterns—for the better or for the worse.

“The fact is, no-one knows how autonomous vehicles are going to impact traffic. PTV helps collect, study and analyse pertinent data that can provide insight into these behaviours.”

Booth 235

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Growth of telematics-based pay as you drive car insurance systems
    July 17, 2012
    Car insurance made cheaper by telematics has returned to news headlines in the UK this year. Will it really take off this time and can vehicle tracking provide an effective tool for enforcing or encouraging insurance compliance? Jon Masters reports Will 2012 go down as the year that telematics-based car insurance took off? In the UK at least, a groundswell of new policies, with premiums priced on the basis of tracked and analysed driving style, suggests a turning point has been reached. Some would argue t
    Read More
  • New Mersey crossing ends Halton’s congestion misery
    December 5, 2017
    Plagued by intolerable congestion but denied government funding for its solution, tiny Halton Borough Council relentlessly pursued its vision and achieved what many believed impossible. Halton may be a small local authority in north west England, but it had a big traffic problem. However, as the road, or more particularly the bridge, involved was not deemed a strategic route, central government would not commission or even fund a solution - a problem that many other local authorities will recognise.
    Read More
  • Road pricing is inevitable – because the ‘user pays’ principle is fair
    June 14, 2018
    We pay for roads through our taxes: the poor pay proportionately more, and effectively subsidise the rich. It would be fairer to accept the ‘user pays’ principle, says Dr John Walker. Road pricing is already used worldwide to combat congestion and pollution, to compensate for falling revenues from fuel duty (‘gas tax’), to provide an alternative (and fairer) means of charging motorists than the 80-year old fuel tax and to improve the efficiency of and expand transport infrastructure. However, it could and s
    Read More
  • ‘Only 20% of people’ would put their child inside an AV, says Fujitsu
    July 24, 2018
    Only 20% of people would be prepared to put their child inside an autonomous vehicle (AV), according to research from Fujitsu. People are more anxious about adopting digital services in travel than they are in other areas of their lives, according to Russell Goodenough, the company’s managing director of business and transport. Just 40% of people would put their trust in an AV - and the transport sector is falling behind in the race to digitisation, the company says. Speaking at a media forum in Lo
    Read More

Highlighted Content