Global positioning system (GPS)

This Research Summary is part of Report 2024-25, "Development of a smart phone app to warn the driver of unintentional lane departure using GPS technology."

Unintentional lane departure is a significant safety risk. Currently, available commercial lane departure warning systems use vision-based or GPS technology with lane-level resolution. These techniques have their own performance limitations in poor weather conditions. We have previously developed a lane departure detection (LDD) algorithm using standard GPS technology. Our algorithm acquires the trajectory of a moving vehicle in real-time from a standard GPS receiver and compares it with a road reference heading (RRH) to detect any potential lane departure. The necessary RRH is obtained from one or more past trajectories using our RRH generation algorithm. This approach has a significant limitation due to its dependency on past trajectories. To overcome this limitation, we have integrated Google routes in addition to past trajectories to extract the RRH of any given road. This advancement has been incorporated into a newly developed smartphone app, which now combines our previously developed LDD algorithm with the enhanced RRH generation algorithm. The app effectively detects lane departures and provides real-time audible warnings to drivers. Additionally, we have designed the app's database structure and completed the programming of the necessary algorithms. To evaluate the performance of the newly developed smartphone app, we perform many field tests on a freeway. Our field test results show that our smartphone app can accurately detect all lane departures on long straight sections of the freeway irrespective of whether the RRH is generated from a Google route or past trajectory.

This Research Brief was created as part of Clear Roads project CR20-04, "Expanded Use of AVL/GPS Technology," published December 2022.

Summer road maintenance is a critical activity for highway maintenance agencies that involves a wide range of maintenance and construction vehicles that can be active at any given time, which makes vehicle and maintenance asset management challenges. Automated Vehicle Location (AVL) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technologies installed in winter maintenance vehicles have the potential to support summer road maintenance vehicles to improve asset tracking and management practices, as well as other purposes such as process automation and paperwork reduction for field staff in terms of activity reporting. The use of AVL/GPS systems to support both winter and summer maintenance activities can help justify the expenses incurred with respect to hardware / software acquisition and training costs across a wide range of applications. This report continues building upon prior Clear Roads research and helps highway maintenance agencies optimize the value gained from the acquisition of AVL/GPS systems by deploying them year-round, rather than being limited to winter maintenance operations. This report summarizes agencies’ experiences and lessons learned in using AVL/GPS technologies in summer and year-round maintenance activities. It also highlights the types of issues other highway maintenance agencies should consider prior to system procurement, provides guidance for successful transition and implementation of the technology, and serves as a possible template for agencies to get the best value out of different levels their AVL/GPS applications.

This research brief was created as part of Clear Roads project CR16-01, "Utilization of AVL/GPS Technology: Case Studies," published June 2018.

Winter road maintenance accounts for roughly 20 percent of state DOT maintenance budgets. State and local agencies spend over $2.3 billion on winter operations annually. As such, effective winter maintenance operations incorporating smart uses of methods, techniques, technologies, equipment and materials becomes essential. Among various winter maintenance technologies, automated vehicle location (AVL) and global positioning systems (GPS) have been widely used by transportation agencies to monitor vehicle locations and equipment operational status for winter road maintenance operations. This report summarizes the information gathered during the study conducted for the Clear Roads project entitled Utilization of AVL/GPS Technology: Case Studies. The research team surveyed multiple state DOTs on the current state of AVL/GPS system usage for the purpose of gathering information on the planning, processes, steps, and results observed by agencies with their respective systems. Six state DOTs (Utah, Washington State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Colorado) were selected to conduct detailed case studies. The case studies were performed through in-person interviews with multiple levels of DOT staff involved in AVL/GPS system planning, procurement, implementation, management and operations. This final report summarizes the key results, findings and lessons learned from the case studies. It also identifies best practices and provides a series of recommendations for winter maintenance agencies to consider in the procurement, deployment and integration of an AVL/GPS system for winter maintenance operations.

This research brief was created as part of Clear Roads project CR14-01, Synthesis on Global Positioning Systems/Automatic Vehicle Location Equipment Used for Winter Maintenance," published July 2016.

This project gathered information about available Global Positioning Systems/Automatic Vehicle Location (GPS/AVL) equipment and vendors to gain an understanding of their use by state and local agencies for winter maintenance activities. Depending on the complexity desired, many tools and equipment can comprise these systems, including truck controllers, data collection devices, communication devices, plow sensors, and software. This equipment allows agencies to better manage and analyze their winter maintenance operations. There are also numerous choices agencies have in what GPS/AVL solutions to employ, as well as how to effectively use them. The project included four main tasks: conducting a national search of available literature about winter maintenance GPS/AVL solutions, equipment, and technology, developing a survey for state and local agencies to collect data on their experiences with GPS/AVL systems, developing an equipment guide about GPS/AVL equipment based on the literature search and survey results, and developing a synthesis of policies focused on issues and considerations relating to the implementation of GPS/AVL technology for winter maintenance. The following report documents the process of completing the four tasks and the findings on GPS/AVL equipment and vendors.

Minnesota’s cities and counties continue to use data to improve operations and are leveraging newer technologies to work smarter. Use of telematics – activating communication systems to share real time information – is transforming local agencies opportunity for continuous optimization with Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) systems using Global Positioning Systems (GPS).

The purpose of this project was to test the feasibility of the integration of heterogeneous sensor systems at the implementation level, as well as to investigate the theoretical development of the algorithms to integrate the navigation information. The goal is a set of algorithms to handle failures in any particular sensor and adaptive adjustment of parameters and navigational fixes. Using real field data, we have demonstrated that different sensors can be integrated in a low cost system. We have also demonstrated that no single sensor can handle the arbitrary situation, but that multiple sensors yields redundancy and robustness unachievable by each sensor alone.