University of Washington

20 Pacifi c Northwest Transportation Consortium Mobility Implications of School Crossing Guard Programs and School Walking Route Maps • PI: Kevin Chang (UI) This research aims to examine two specifi c components of walking and bicycling to school programs: 1) the formation, operation, and effectiveness of crossing guard programs and 2) the development, distribution, and usage of walking and bicycling to school walking route maps. The states of Washington and Idaho will serve as a baseline to determine if external factors such as legislative mandates drive certain policies and correspond to changes in behavior. To complete this research study, a literature review will be initially conducted and will be followed by an analysis of existing data, interviews with school principals and administrators, site assessments, and the development of a fi nal report. Decentralized Autonomous Electric Mobility-on-Demand Services for Individuals with Physical and Cognitive Disabilities • PI: Sameh Sorour (UI) To cope with the large volumes of demand on such services in general, and especially for customers with disabilities, this project proposes a new decentralized dispatching and charging framework for AEMoD services, which divides cities into small zones. Zone sizes will be chosen small enough for the allocated vehicles to customers to reach their positions within bounded delays. Each zone will be managed by a fog controller, which will can effi ciently collect information about customer demands, vehicle state-of-charge, and their disability-friendliness in its zone. Given this information, it will make optimized dispatching and charging decisions for these vehicles in a timely manner. The proposed framework will leverage both the IoT and fog computing/analytics/control technologies to provide fast AEMoD services to the targeted city customers. To achieve this goal, this project aims to fulfi ll two main objectives: 1. Develop rigorous mathematical models to formulate, analyze and solve the IoT and fog enabled joint AEMoD dispatching and charging problems to satisfy different system, battery- level, user-conditions and quality of experience criteria. 2. Conduct a needs assessment with individuals with disabilities to identify the features that guarantee the suitability of the proposed solutions for their needs and maximize their acceptance of such solutions. Spatial Analysis of Accessible Seating Area on the Next Generation Passenger Rail Cars Using 3-D Modeling and Virtual Reality • PI: K.M. Hunter-Zaworski (OSU) The original research that is proposed is to use 3-D modeling tools, anthropometric digital human models, and virtual reality to design and evaluate passenger rail environments for inclusivity and safety while also considering design constraints for vehicle builders and operators. By itself, 3-D modeling provides a means of digitally evaluating design feasibility of potential accommodations. Including anthropometric human models into early phases of design then accounts for human factors and ergonomic factors as well, however a physical mockup would still be required to access validity and target user opinion. It is proposed that creating a virtual reality environment based on evaluated 3-D models and using it for human subject evaluation will create a framework that eliminates the need for a potentially expensive and time-consuming physical mockup. Using digital evaluation would also permit the inclusion of analysis for many different types of WhMD, design scenarios, and anthropometric users within the same space. It is anticipated that one of the results of this project will be a framework for using 3-D modeling and virtual reality to evaluate and test spatial consumption, feasibility, human factors, and human-environment interaction on other modes of rail travel as well, for example transit and light rail vehicles.

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