Plenary Speakers
We are excited to introduce the panelists of ITSC 2024. This year’s conference brings together leaders and innovators from the field of intelligent transportation systems. Our panelists will share their insights, experiences, and forward-thinking ideas that are shaping the future of transportation. Join us for enlightening talk by these experts.
Incentive Design for Promoting Ridesharing
Traffic congestion is a pressing global issue exacerbated by the prevalence of single-occupancy commuter trips. Ridesharing stands as a promising solution to alleviate this problem. Yet, numerous hurdles hinder its widespread adoption, notably the uncertainty of securing a return trip and the challenge of building a critical mass of participants. This talk will focus on the design of a Traveler Incentive Program (TIP) to address these obstacles. This program strategically allocates incentives to subsidize rides and incentivize behavioral shifts among select travelers. We formulate the underlying ride-matching problem as a budget-constrained min-cost flow problem and develop algorithmic tools with worst-case optimality bounds to solve large-scale instances of this problem. We further propose a polynomial-time budget-balanced version of the problem. Our numerical experiments demonstrate that incentivizing behavioral change yields far greater benefits than solely subsidizing rides. Remarkably, even a modest 2% flat tax rate can effectively double the system’s social welfare in the budget-balanced variant of the incentive program.
Neda Masoud
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
Neda Masoud is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial Engineering and a Master of Science degree in Physics. She received her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California Irvine. She is dedicated to developing operational and planning tools that streamline the evolution toward the next generation of mobility systems, which are envisioned to be connected, automated, electrified, and shared, reflecting the forefront of transportation advancements. She is a 2021 NSF CAREER Award recipient and a Cambridge Systematics New Faculty awardee by the Council of University Transportation Centers. She is an Editorial Board Editor for Transportation Research Part B, an Associate Editor for Transportation Science, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Transportation Research Part C.
Vision-based Drone Navigation, from Frames to Event Cameras
Autonomous drones play a crucial role in inspection, agriculture, logistics, and search-and-rescue missions and promise to increase productivity by a factor of 10. However, they still lag behind human pilots in speed, versatility, and robustness. What does it take to fly autonomous drones as agile as or even better than human pilots? Autonomous, agile navigation through unknown, GPS-denied environments poses several challenges for robotics research regarding perception, learning, planning, and control. In this talk, I will show how the combination of model-based and machine-learning methods, united with the power of new, low-latency sensors, such as event cameras, can allow drones to achieve unprecedented speed and robustness by relying solely on onboard computing. This can result in better productivity and safety of future autonomous aircraft.
Davide Scaramuzza
University of Zurich
The Future of Transportation is Electrified and Automated
This talk discusses the challenges and opportunities of electrifying and automating transportation systems. We first review the overarching trends and challenges posed by decarbonization and safety, the key motivators for electrification and automation, respectively. Next, we discuss the NEXTCAR project, which seeks to reduce energy consumption in an EV by 30% by leveraging connectivity and automation. The next section will discuss SlrpEV – Smart Learning Research Pilot for Electric Vehicle charging stations, which addresses the challenges of public/workplace charging infrastructure. The last project discusses the decarbonization of freight movement via electric heavy duty trucks and battery swapping stations. We close with perspectives on how transportation systems are becoming more coupled with electric power systems.
Scott Moura
University of California, Berkeley
Scott Moura is the Clare and Hsieh Wen Shen Endowed Distinguished Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering, Director of the Energy, Controls, & Applications Lab (eCAL), PATH Faculty Director, and Chair of Engineering Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He received the B.S. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2006, 2008, and 2011, respectively, all in mechanical engineering. From 2011 to 2013, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cymer Center for Control Systems and Dynamics, University of California, San Diego. In 2013, he was a Visiting Researcher at the Centre Automatique et Systèmes, MINES ParisTech, Paris, France. His research interests include control, optimization, and machine learning for batteries, electrified vehicles, and distributed energy resources.
Dr. Moura is a recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division Young Investigator Award, Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Student Mentor Award, the Hellman Fellowship, the O. Hugo Shuck Best Paper Award, the ACC Best Student Paper Award (as advisor), the ACC and ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference Best Student Paper Finalist (as student and advisor), the UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the University of Michigan Distinguished ProQuest Dissertation Honorable Mention, the University of Michigan Rackham Merit Fellowship, and the College of Engineering Distinguished Leadership Award.
From Drawing to Life: Implementing the Connected Car (Industry Plenary)
It is a common question: when a new and useful technology is identified, what does it take to bring this into production and into the hands of the consumer? The answer is never “everything, everywhere, all at once,” and almost never is technology the primary determining factor for such deployment. This presentation and fireside chat will discuss the evolutionary path of the Connected Vehicle, its fits and starts, the incremental successes and the setbacks, but most importantly, the little-known backstories for how and why each of those events took place. History records the outcomes or “what” occurred, but the template for future progression is built upon knowing the “whys” and recognizing how to leverage these techniques to minimize the times between invention and production.
Robert Gee
Continental
Robert Gee is the strategy manager responsible for standards, government, and intellectual property globally, within Continental’s Architecture and Networking Solutions Business Area. He collaborates with customers, consortia, governments, and other companies to enable safe transportation, sustainable business practices, and consumer information needs. Spanning more than 30 years, Robert’s experience at IBM, Loral, Motorola, and other leading companies includes military and commercial communications systems, space and terrestrial technologies, and secure government communications for dozens of countries in Europe, North America, and Asia. He has a Master’s Degree in Computer Science, a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering, and over 20 issued patents. Robert’s experience extends to the news and entertainment industry, in which he is a national television Emmy Award recipient for his work as a producer for CNN. He has been credited for successfully pioneering the modern contracting approach for citizen photojournalists, and at one point had a CNN-estimated syndication audience of over 1 billion viewers.
More Speakers Coming Soon
Stay tuned for more exciting speaker announcements!