national research highlights

ATI Recruited to Join National Center for Rural Road Safety

The National Center for Rural Road Safety is a leading resource to help transportation agencies reduce deaths on their roads. The center, also known as the Rural Road Safety Center (RRSC), offers training, technical assistance, national roadway safety certificate programs, and research specifically tailored to the needs of rural transportation practitioners.

ATI-affiliated Faculty are Participants in 2 of the 10 ATCMTD Awards

Dr. Mizan Rahman, Assistant Professor in Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, is the UA faculty lead in the Smart and Connected Atlantic City Expressway project awarded to the South Jersey Transportation Authority.

Dr. Alex Hainen and Ms. Elsa Tedla will help ALDOT deploy and integrate advanced traffic technologies that support critical transportation communication networks for Proactive Route Operations to Avert Congestion in Traffic (PROACT) in Cullman, Alabama. Read more about PROACT on pg 12.

PoliMOVE Racing Team

Last year, the PoliMOVE team and their accomplishments were featured prominently in ATI news and this year was no different.

PoliMOVE was created as an international collaboration between Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and The University of Alabama. In January 2022, the first head-tohead autonomous race car competition was held at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The field of competitors was impressive, five teams from five countries representing seven universities, but it was PoliMOVE that took home the grand prize of $150,000 and made autonomous racing history.

In the spring, PoliMOVE was invited to the historic Kennedy Space Center to operate the Indy Autonomous Challenge racecar, a Dallara AV-21. The goal of this challenge was to push the limits of current engine capabilities in autonomous vehicles. As a result, the engine package designed by PoliMOVE set the record for the World’s Fastest Autonomous Race Car of 192.2 MPH / 309.3 KPH over 1,000 meters.

“We saw what the future holds for autonomous vehicles and credit goes to the entire PoliMOVE team, especially Dr. Brandon Dixon of the University of Alabama. We were running a car operating on algorithms alone, where precision is paramount, and any small prediction error could have created a completely different outcome. This test run was exhilarating, and we are thrilled with the world record, but we’re also excited by the fact that this data will be made available to all, and the industry will benefit from our work and learnings.”

Professor Sergio Savaresi, team lead of Politecnico di Milano access more information about the IUCRC award program and projects evsts.asu.edu