University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers are leading a first-of-its-kind research center devoted to advancing autonomous vehicle (AV) availability in rural and tribal communities.
The Tribal and Rural Autonomous Vehicles for Equity, Liability and Safety (TRAVELS) Center at UW-Madison is supported by a $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, with an additional $15 million available through matching funds and services from state entities, industry partners and participating universities.
“TRAVELS is the first national large-scale program focusing on rural and tribal autonomous passenger vehicles. It will help accelerate the deployment of state-of-the-art AV technologies in vast rural and tribal areas in the United States that have often lagged behind in access to these technologies,” says Xiaopeng “Shaw” Li, a UW-Madison professor of civil and environmental engineering who is heading the initiative. “It includes both fundamental research and real-world outreach and deployment. It will be a unique opportunity to utilize our cutting-edge research on real-world problems and see how university research can truly benefit communities in Wisconsin and across the nation.”
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) was instrumental in advocating for the center. “I am thrilled that Wisconsin is at the center of autonomous vehicle innovation, helping make transportation more efficient, safer, and accessible for communities of all sizes,” said Senator Baldwin. “This program has the potential to help connect folks in rural and Native communities with better health care, good jobs, food, entertainment, and so much more – and I am proud to have done my part to make it a reality.”
There are many barriers to transportation services in rural communities, including a lack of or limited availability of services like public transit, as well as physical infrastructure limitations and workforce shortages.
The researchers hope to develop solutions that could ultimately help, for example, fill gaps in healthcare access or enable people without personal vehicles to commute to work. That could be through services like autonomous busses or robotaxis. “We can directly dispatch autonomous vehicles if we get a call from someone who has a need,” Li says. “That can improve response speed and, if they’re deployed at scale, they could provide more frequent access to services across large geographic areas, connect people to job opportunities, and bolster access to necessities. There are other aspects we’re looking at, but those three are some of the major potential advantages for autonomous vehicles.”
Moving autonomous vehicles from cities, where they’re most frequently used, to rural communities comes with its own set of challenges. Andrea Bill, traffic safety engineer research program manager in the Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory at UW-Madison, says rural roads can have different types of pavement marking and lane striping, or no striping at all. That means it will be important to make sure autonomous vehicles can “see” and “understand” their surroundings well enough for safe navigation, regardless of the lack of common roadway infrastructure.
She says autonomous vehicles may also have to recognize “unusual” vehicles—like tractors or other farm machinery—that rarely travel in cities.
Li says the team will research how to develop a physical and digital infrastructure backbone that uses tools like low-cost sensors, drones or even satellites to expand autonomous vehicle service in rural areas. Those technologies work in conjunction with infrastructure enhancements like improved road markings and signage upgrades.
“In scenarios when a signal is weak or unavailable, some of these autonomous vehicles can navigate by using offline maps and real-time sensing,” Li says. “That’s one of the types of challenges we expect to resolve, and we’re going to find solutions through the course of this research.”
Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor and Wisconsin Transportation Center/TOPS Lab Executive Director David Noyce says the center’s researchers will rely on input from many partners—especially rural and tribal communities—to understand how autonomous vehicles can suit their unique needs. That will build upon many of the connections and partnerships UW-Madison has already established, through initiatives like the Eastern Tribal Technical Assistance Program and Local Technical Assistance Program.
“Even though there’s a lot of collaborative efforts in these current programs, development of rural AV systems can’t be a one-way street,” Noyce says. “This is really a case where partnerships are critical. We need to work with the local communities so we can understand their needs and how AV solutions can be developed to meet these needs. It’s an ongoing dialogue.”
The center will also rely on similar partnerships at collaborating institutions; Oklahoma State University hosts the Southern Tribal Technical Assistance Program, and the University of Washington hosts the Northwestern Tribal Technical Assistance Program. Morgan State University is a historically black research university, while Northern Oklahoma College serves members of Native communities.
Other center partners include the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Georgia. The institutions will work with 34 state-level partners: eight state agencies, nine local governments, 12 tribal nations and five nonprofit organizations. The TRAVELS Center also brings in several industrial partners with experience in multi-modal autonomous vehicles and associated technologies.
The center will begin a six-year project in 2025 that will unfold in three phases: research, demonstration and deployment. The research institutions will carry out the bulk of the first phase, and Li says industry partners should become more actively involved as the project moves to development and active deployment.
Li is the Harvey D. Spangler Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Noyce is the Arthur F. Hawnn Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and College of Engineering Executive Associate Dean.
Featured image caption: Xiaopeng “Shaw” Li, a UW-Madison professor of civil and environmental engineering, is heading the TRAVELS Center, the first national large-scale program focusing on rural and tribal autonomous passenger vehicles. Photo: Joel Hallberg.