Special to DVN by John Cooper, IAV Automotive Engineering
About 10,000 attendees came to the 21 st Intelligent Transportation Systems World Congress, from 7–10 September in Detroit. This mammoth attendance figure is indicative of the evolution of intelligence in transportation systems toward more onboard technology, and this annual congress, which changes continents every year (2013 Tokyo, 2015 Bordeaux, 2016 Melbourne, 2017 Montreal) was held in Detroit for the first time this year.
Traditionally, ITS members and activities come from the traffic infrastructure domain with many members from government and traffic technology companies. However the recent surge in activity in the area of intelligent vehicles has made this year’s locale of Detroit extremely appropriate. Though participating members and attendees were still a majority from infrastructure, the intelligent vehicle actors, automated driving and connected vehicles are now rapidly catching up in the attendance. More than half of the vehicle demonstrations were for automated/intelligent applications.
A significant landmark for the 2014 ITS WC were the vehicle demonstrations for attendees transported by shuttle to nearby Belle Isle in the Detroit river where separate stretches of road could be more easily isolated for testing of the new technology. The automated driving demonstrations were especially popular with the attendees. One participating driving assistance company counted five times more “relevant” visitors coming to its driving demos on the island than to its stand in Cobo Hall.