Millions Of Drivers Research Articles

Flexible solid-solid phase change material with zero leakage via in-situ preparation for battery thermal management

<p>Composite phase change material (CPCM) has great potential in addressing the challenges associated with thermal energy storage and thermal management. However, the flexibility and latent heat capacity of CPCM exist contradiction, hindering its wide application, especially in thermal management field. Herein, a novel solid-solid polyurethane structured phase change material including as chain segments PEG4000 and hexamethylene diisocyanate coupling with expanded graphite (PHE5) has been proposed and prepared via in-situ approach. Expand graphite is uniformly distributed and the carbamate group is produced by in-situ preparation, the high latent heat and anti-leakage characteristics of PHE5 are beneficial to sustain a constant mass with zero leakage even under 150�� heating condition. At a 3 C discharge rate, the battery module with PHE5 can reduce the maximum temperature to 59��, which is lower than the PE-based module. Additionally, the battery system can maintain the temperature difference below 4.5��, ensuring uniform temperature within the battery module. The flexibility and controlling temperature capabilities of PHE5 can effectively dissipate heat during charge and discharge cycles, and the mechanistic analysis of PHE5 with anti-leakage property can enhance the battery thermal safety, achieving comprehensive protection throughout normal operating and extreme conditions. Thus, this research reveals that solid-solid CPCM with polyurethane structured can improve the flexible and anti-leakage properties via in-situ preparation, which will offer an effective thermal safety solution for battery module, substantially enhancing the safety of millions of drivers and passengers.</p>

Driving a sustainable road transportation transformation

Driving a sustainable road transportation transformation

Privacy pitfalls of releasing in-vehicle network data

The ever-increasing volume of vehicular data has enabled different service providers to access and monetize in-vehicle network data of millions of drivers. However, such data often carry personal or even potentially sensitive information, and therefore service providers either need to ask for drivers' consent or anonymize such data in order to comply with data protection regulations. In this paper, we show that both fine-grained consent control as well as the adequate anonymization of in-network vehicular data are very challenging. First, by exploiting that in-vehicle sensor measurements are inherently interdependent, we are able to effectively i) re-identify a driver even from the raw, unprocessed CAN data with 97% accuracy, and ii) reconstruct the vehicle's complete location trajectory knowing only its speed and steering wheel position. Since such signal interdependencies are hard to identify even for data controllers, drivers' consent will arguably not be informed and hence may become invalid. Second, we show that the non-systematic application of different standard anonymization techniques (e.g., aggregation, suppression, signal distortion) often results in volatile, empirical privacy guarantees to the population as a whole but fails to provide a strong, worst-case privacy guarantee to every single individual. Therefore, we advocate the application of principled privacy models (such as Differential Privacy) to anonymize data with strong worst-case guarantee.

Choosing Ethics Over Morals: A Possible Determinant to Embracing Artificial Intelligence in Future Urban Mobility

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming integral to human life, and the successful wide-scale uptake of autonomous and automated vehicles (AVs) will depend upon people's willingness to adopt and accept AI-based technology and its choices. A person's state of mind, a fundamental belief evolving out of an individual's character, personal choices, intrinsic motivation, and general way of life forming perceptions about how society should be governed, influences AVs perception. The state of mind includes perceptions about governance of autonomous vehicles' artificial intelligence (AVAI) and thus has an impact on a person's willingness to adopt and use AVs. However, one determinant of whether AVAI should be driven by society's ethics or the driver's morals, a “state of mind” variable, has not been studied. We asked 1,473 student, staff, and employee respondents at a university campus whether they prefer an AVAI learn their owners own personal morals (one's own principles) or adopt societal ethics (codes of conduct provided by an external source). Respondents were almost evenly split between whether AVAI should rely on ethics (45.6%) or morals (54.4%). Personal morals and societal ethics are not necessarily distinct and different. Sometimes both overlap and discrepancies are settled in court. However, with an AVAI these decision algorithms must be preprogrammed and the fundamental difference thus is whether an AI should learn from the individual driver (this is the status quo on how we drive today) or from society incorporating millions of drivers' choices. Both are bounded by law. Regardless, to successfully govern artificial intelligence in cities, policy-makers must thus bridge the deep divide between individuals who choose morals over ethics and vice versa.

Crowdsensing using Geofencing for Smart Parking

Finding a parking spot for a car is a practical problem faced by millions of drivers daily. Most of the times it involves anxiety and uncertainty, also considering a threat to environment, it wastes limited resources which includes time, road space, and fuel. Also drivers roam around in search of free parking spaces. These problems could be minimized if drivers had advance information of vacant parking spots. This information can be gathered with dedicated sensor systems keeping track of the reservation status of parking areas. New devices such as mobile phones come with a variable number of sensors and thus can interact with many things in environment. Recently mobile operating systems have started to incorporate means to offer contextual information derived from measurements of multiple sensors, i.e. by interacting with open sources it can get information about the surrounding. The idea is to investigate how these interacting capabilities could be used to derive information about available parking places in addition to parking sensor of the infrastructure or by smart parking using geofencing by which the model aims to reduce the traffic in the surrounding.

Unintended responses to IT‐enabled monitoring: The case of the electronic logging device mandate

AbstractResearch shows that electronic monitoring technologies can reduce illicit agent (e.g., frontline worker) behavior along monitored dimensions such that principals (e.g., firms) benefit. Drawing on theory from criminology regarding the concept of offense displacement, we explain why the benefits from increased monitoring may be mitigated if agents subsequently increase other types of illicit acts not subject to greater monitoring. We investigate this possibility by examining how a mandate requiring millions of truck drivers to adopt electronic logging devices to record their working hours affected different safety behaviors and outcomes. Using data from millions of driver inspections and crash counts before and after the mandate and a differences‐in‐differences identification strategy, we find greater monitoring due to the mandate achieved its first‐order effect of reducing the frequency that drivers were in non‐compliance with work hour rules (the monitored dimension). However, drivers for small firms that were most affected by the mandate also appear to have increased their frequency of unsafe driving (e.g., speeding). We also find that crash counts for small firms did not fall relative to large firms, and may have increased. These results call into question whether increased electronic monitoring has improved safety in this industry.

Uberizing Informality: The Case of Non-owner, Driver-Partners in the City of Hyderabad

The growth of gig platforms in India has seen the arrival of platforms such as Uber and Ola who have rapidly expanded to employ millions of drivers as “independent partners” in urban centres across the country. These drivers form the backbone of these platforms, which look to connect these drivers to prospective riders and charge a fee for proffering their services. This paper attempts to frame the rise of gig work historically and understand it through the lens of non-owner Uber partners in the city of Hyderabad. It attempts to locate the distinct varieties of drivers within the ride-hailing ecosystem, while focussing on reintermediation in the sector, which employs a significant number of non-owner drivers. The paper finally looks at the impact of labour oversupply within the driver marketplace and argues for a regulatory structure that is representative of the distinct nature of gig markets.

An analysis of the individual economics of ride-hailing drivers

Ride-hailing companies are disrupting transportation at a large scale while also providing economic opportunities to millions of drivers. Companies such as Uber and Lyft constantly promote potential earnings on the order of $25–$35 per hour. Yet, the advertised earnings do not account for factors such as time spent without passengers, the need to travel back-and-forth between areas of low and high ridership, driver residential location, or driving expenses. By examining a unique and detailed dataset collected using ethnographic methods – primary data collected by one of the authors who became an independent contractor to drive for both Uber and Lyft in the Denver area – we examine actual earnings with three common expense scenarios to answer the question of how much ride-hailing drivers actually earn.This study first assesses the cost per mile to passengers – including fare, fees, tolls, and gratuity – and finds that the result follows a power law function (in relation to trip distance) with a median cost of $2.50 per mile (not including value of time). We then assess driver earnings and estimate gross wages averaging $15.57 per hour. Given three common expense scenarios, we estimate net hourly wages ranging between $5.72 and $10.46 per hour before taxes. This suggests that most ride-hailing drivers earn less than the state minimum wage in Colorado. Our results also suggest that drivers are better off parking and waiting for the next ride request rather than driving to a more active location unless doing so cuts at least 30% of ride request waiting time. We then identify cruising and deadheading as negative externalities of ride-hailing and suggest per-mile ride-hailing fees, which start at zero passengers and provide discounts, based on increasing vehicle occupancy, to help mitigate this issue. While our data collection focused on the Denver region, ride-hailing rates and cost of living adjustments to specific cities can be used for comparison, providing insight into the individual economics for ride-hailing drivers.

ICT-Based Business Communication with Customers in the 4th Industrial Revolution Era

Objectives: As information and communications technologies (ICTs) such as augmented reality, virtual reality, IoT, and artificial intelligence are developed rapidly, the general public is becoming familiar with ICT technologies. Companies should innovate their communication methods to the public who are familiar with these ICT technologies. We need to actively incorporate ICT technologies to create creative ways of communicating our companies to our customers. Methods: The latest ICT technologies (augmented reality, artificial intelligence, IoT, self-driving car, etc.) are used to review the methods with cases in which they communicate with customers and present effective ICT technology-based solutions. Results: If new media services such as augmented reality, various quiz shows, and interactive TV are utilized, customers can be brought to stores, shopping malls, and various contents through indirect and unique experiences. In the future, if self-driving cars are commercialized in earnest, hundreds of millions of drivers will have a leisurely time inside self-driving cars. Several content companies have come up with ways to communicate with customers through screens and virtual reality inside self-driving cars. Conclusions: The development of ICT technology provides companies with new opportunities for communication. Communication methods with customers using ICT technology are always changing. Already, communication methods that use drones and ASMD (Adoptive Source Multi Device) have become out of fashion even before they become popular. ICT changes quickly; it must actively replicate the methods used in other industries and quickly utilize them.

Design and Evaluation of a Surface Electromyography-Controlled Steering Assistance Interface.

Millions of drivers could experience shoulder muscle overload when rapidly rotating steering wheels and reduced steering ability at increased steering wheel angles. In order to address these issues for drivers with disability, surface electromyography (sEMG) sensors measuring biceps brachii muscle activity were incorporated into a steering assistance system for remote steering wheel rotation. The path-following accuracy of the sEMG interface with respect to a game steering wheel was evaluated through driving simulator trials. Human participants executed U-turns with differing radii of curvature. For a radius of curvature equal to the minimum vehicle turning radius of 3.6 m, the sEMG interface had significantly greater accuracy than the game steering wheel, with intertrial median lateral errors of 0.5 m and 1.2 m, respectively. For a U-turn with a radius of 7.2 m, the sEMG interface and game steering wheel were comparable in accuracy, with respective intertrial median lateral errors of 1.6 m and 1.4 m. The findings of this study could be utilized to realize accurate sEMG-controlled automobile steering for persons with disability.

Loving the Automobile to Death? Injuries, Mortality, Fear, and Automobility in West Germany and the United States, 1950–1980/Autoliebe und Verkehrstod. Verletzungen, Angst und Automobilismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und den USA 1950–1980

Automobility, as it has been understood by historians, has been the historical locus of joy and excitement for millions of drivers and their passengers. Si- multaneously, the growth of the automotive sector has resulted in the deaths and injuries of millions of drivers, passengers, and pedestrians. This paper aims to analyze debates and technological solutions surrounding these crashes and their differing perceptions in the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States during the post-World War II period. West Germany’s response to this lethal crisis was a focus on infrastructures and a call for abolishing speed limits on the part of many drivers and their advocates. In the United States, however, automobiles and their design received more attention. Fears and solutions offered to counter fear shaped technological artifacts; in turn, these artifacts themselves were the objects of emotional debates.

Go slow to go fast: minimal on-road time route scheduling with parking facilities using historical trajectory

For thousands of years, people have been innovating new technologies to make their travel faster, the latest of which is GPS technology that is used by millions of drivers every day. The routes recommended by a GPS device are computed by path planning algorithms (e.g., fastest path algorithm), which aim to minimize a certain objective function (e.g., travel time) under the current traffic condition. When the objective is to arrive the destination as early as possible, waiting during travel is not an option as it will only increase the total travel time due to the First-In-First-Out property of most road networks. However, some businesses such as logistics companies are more interested in optimizing the actual on-road time of their vehicles (i.e., while the engine is running) since it is directly related to the operational cost. At the same time, the drivers' trajectories, which can reveal the traffic conditions on the roads, are also collected by various service providers. Compared to the existing speed profile generation methods, which mainly rely on traffic monitor systems, the trajectory-based method can cover a much larger space and is much cheaper and flexible to obtain. This paper proposes a system, which has an online component and an offline component, to solve the minimal on-road time problem using the trajectories. The online query answering component studies how parking facilities along the route can be leveraged to avoid predicted traffic jam and eventually reduce the drivers' on-road time, while the offline component solves how to generate speed profiles of a road network from historical trajectories. The challenging part of the routing problem of the online component lies in the computational complexity when determining if it is beneficial to wait on specific parking places and the time of waiting to maximize the benefit. To cope with this challenging problem, we propose two efficient algorithms using minimum on-road travel cost function to answer the query. We further introduce several approximation methods to speed up the query answering, with an error bound guaranteed. The offline speed profile generation component makes use of historical trajectories to provide the traveling time for the online component. Extensive experiments show that our method is more efficient and accurate than baseline approaches extended from the existing path planning algorithms, and our speed profile is accurate and space efficient.

The Expressway Teardown Movement in American Cities

At least two dozen American cities have discussed or planned removals or teardowns of inner-city elevated expressways, and a few cities have already done so. In the 1970s, Boston, New York City, and Portland, Oregon initiated such teardowns, each with a different replacement: Boston began replacing its elevated Central Artery with a system of tunnels, later known as the Big Dig; New York replaced its West Side Highway with a street-level boulevard; and Portland bulldozed its Harbor Drive to make way for a waterfront park. Now, many cities are re-evaluating past highway policy that pushed elevated interstate highways through central cities, with consequent severe damage to housing, businesses, and neighborhoods. The teardown movement is high on the agenda of the Congress for the New Urbanism, now headed by John Norquist. A former Mayor of Milwaukee, Norquist pioneered the twenty-first century expressway teardown in an effort to eliminate an unneeded eyesore and spur downtown economic development. This article surveys the debate over teardown policy in several cities. It also analyzes the movement generally, suggesting that the main thrust is to compensate for past decisions that damaged central cities, but that the movement poses no threat to the heavily used urban expressways that millions of drivers rely on every day. Many teardown advocates have also promoted greater investment in mass transit and light rail.

The Roads Ahead: Collision Risks, Trends, and Safety of Drivers

The propensity of fatal traffic collisions transcends driver age and reinforces the need to evaluate, among other factors, the impact of roadway lighting and other features of driver vision, perception, and performance. Collisions may result from a driver's inability to notice delineation, recognize warnings, and other possible road safety controls during various lighting conditions. Hence we compare the relative accident involvement ratio (RAIR) of collisions of millions of drivers from two U.S. States over an 11-year period, 1991-2001. We associate collision trends through RAIR with bathtub curves that are commonly identified with product failure and reliability engineering. Hence we observe the need for improved and automated driver's license testing techniques and applications, especially as these relate to the visual and cognitive abilities of drivers of all ages. Our findings may ultimately improve motorist safety, save lives, and benefit numerous other states, countries, and agencies, including, but not limited to, aviation, commercial vehicles, maritime, and rail sectors, among others.

Putting a Price on Mobility: Cars and Contradictions in Planning

Private vehicle travel has conferred enormous benefits on many millions of drivers and their passengers, but its rise to dominance has also imposed significant social and environmental costs on society. This has caused a profound ambivalence among many planners over the proper role for automobiles in society, particularly in cities. The results are plans and policies that aim both to facilitate automobile use and to encourage travel by other means, in all cases shielding travelers from paying, or even perceiving, the true cost of their travel. But off-the-shelf technologies now make it easy to price many transportation modes at close to marginal social cost, a change that would improve traffic flow, reduce emissions, and increase walking, biking, carpooling, and transit use in cities. While the political obstacles to better transportation pricing remain daunting, planners today have real opportunities to begin weaving transportation pricing into planning practice.

Dynamic Simulation of Traffic and Its Environmental Impacts

Abstract This paper demonstrates a model-chain that is able to determine environmental impacts of traffic. The dynamic microsimulation models described cover the problems of traffic assignment and calculation of emissions by microscopic vehicle states. Due to their computational efficiency the model-chain promises to be applicable even for large networks with millions of drivers. First results will be presented.

The physics of traffic

Traffic jams are a fact of life for many car drivers. Every morning millions of drivers around the world sit motionless in their vehicles for long periods of time as they try to get to work, and then repeat the experience on their journeys home in the evening. The same thing often happens when they are driving to the coast for the weekend or to the airport to go on their holidays. They blame other drivers, increasing volumes of traffic and, inevitably, roadworks. So what has any of this got to do with physics?