Cal ITE's Interdistrict Transportation Competition workshop features SafeTREC's VR simulator

November 27, 2024
Submitted by Lisa Peterson

This fall, the UC Berkeley student chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and the Cal Transportation Team hosted the 2024 Interdistrict Transportation Competition (ITC) a conference intended to be a space for students to "engage in various transportation-related challenges often seen in the professional world, including in fields like planning, design, and data analysis." The ITC also provided a career fair, project fair, and a series of technical seminars aimed at helping students acquire essential skills useful in the transportation industry. There were over 150 attendees, with students from 13 schools from the Western and Inter-Mountain ITE Districts.

VR bicycle simulator demonstrates impact of AV behavior on traffic flow

As part of the "Traffic Simulating Demo with Autonomous Vehicles" workshop on November 9, 2024 led by UC Berkeley assistant professor Dr. Maria Laura Delle Monache, UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center's (SafeTREC) former graduate student researcher Han Wang demonstrated our bicycle simulator — originally created to gather data on cyclists' perceptions of safety in different road environments. This demo provided students with hands-on experience identifying where you can modify the behavior of autonomous vehicles and see the impact on traffic flow.

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UCB Professor Delle Monache presents AV workshop at the ITC conference

Professor Delle Monache leading the AV workshop at the ITC conference

SafeTREC graduate student researcher Han Wang with students at AV simulator workshop

SafeTREC former graduate student researcher Han Wang with students during the AV simulator workshop

What the students discovered

The workshop aimed to help students discover how vehicular technology can be exploited to create traffic solutions. It focused on "the MegaVanderTest, a groundbreaking experiment with 100 connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). The MegaVanderTest is the field test which achieved the largest concentration of CAVs collaboratively controlling traffic on a single stretch of freeway." Students were provided with hands-on experience with "a VR simulator of the experiment, where you can modify the behavior of autonomous vehicles and see the impact on traffic flow."

More about the VR simulator

The simulator, which uses a virtual reality (VR) headset, a step-through hybrid bicycle, and a smart bike trainer, was originally developed by a group of UC Berkeley SafeTREC researchers including Julia Griswold, director of UC Berkeley SafeTREC, and Han Wang, Ph.D. candidate in transportation engineering at UC Berkeley and former graduate student researcher at UC Berkeley SafeTREC.

As a member of the Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety (CPBS), a Tier-1 University Transportation Center funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation, UC Berkeley SafeTREC's collaboration with UC Berkeley ITE is in line with the center's mission to eliminate pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities and serious injuries through research, education, technology transfer, and workforce development. Learn more about SafeTREC's CPBS activities.

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