Author:
Laarni Jari,Väätänen Antti
Abstract
Public transportation is becoming smart and autonomous. Also trams and
their operation environments are becoming autonomous, and it has been
envisioned that in the near future trams could drive among other traffic in
all conditions and circumstances. On the other hand, there are several
challenges in the development of autonomous tram systems, since trams are
operating in urban environments where high demands are set for sensors and
sensor networks aiming at reliable detection of pedestrians and other
vehicles. We are developing ‘The SmartRail ecosystem’ setting, which
promotes transition from traditional engineering and manufacturing towards
more advanced service and business ecosystem enabling a smart autonomous
tram and integrated digital services for its whole life-cycle. The paper
will present the development of a Concept of Operations (ConOps) for
autonomous smart trams to demonstrate how they can be applied and utilized
in public transportation in the future. The proposed ConOps can be
considered as a boundary object in the design, validation or procurement of
autonomous trams. We also propose that the ConOps should be maintained
throughout the system life-cycle as an overview description and definition
of overall goals and policies.A ConOps is a high-level description of how
the elements of a system and entities in its environment interact in order
to achieve their stated goals. The ConOps for an autonomous tram system will
include, among others, the following information: overall goals and
constraints of the SmartRail system, overall environmental characteristics,
other stakeholders, main system elements and functions, operational states
and scenarios, high-level performance requirements, system advantages and
disadvantages, and human-autonomy teaming concept. Four different
operational states will be considered: 1) starting a morning shift at the
tram garage; 2) approaching a pedestrian crossing; 3) approaching and
passing a tram stop; and 4) crossing other vehicles. The effect of seasonal
conditions and weather events are also considered. A ConOps diagram has been
drawn to illustrate how different stakeholders and the operating environment
interact, and what kind of information is shared between different
stakeholders.A special attention will be paid on the development of
human-autonomy teaming concept for smart autonomous tram systems. A typical
autonomous framework is based on a cross-tabulation of a scale of level of
automation with stages of human information processing for a set of
operational situations. We propose flexible automation solution in which the
control function can be flexibly allocated to the automation or to the human
operator at different phases of a tram route.Various knowledge elicitation
techniques were used to gather relevant information for the ConOps: The
development of the ConOps is based on a literature review, semi-structured
interviews of tram drivers and trainers, and group interviews of experts
working on research and development of autonomous road vehicles.
Cited by
1 articles.
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1. A Realtime Map Tracker for an Autonomous Tram: Design and Implementation;2023 International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Informatics (ICEEI);2023-10-10