Areas of Focus:
Mobility is a defining feature of modern society. Recent generations have benefited from freedom of movement in ways that may have seemed unimaginable even fifty years ago. We commute miles to work, dash to the market to get some forgotten item, drop off kids at after school activities, casually take road trips once considered as once in a lifetime journies.
However, mass mobility is a double-edged sword. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, more than 30,000 individuals die in traffic accidents each year in the United States. Likewise, transportation accounts for almost 30% of total U.S. energy consumption and concommitant pollution. Researchers have recently found that driving can be one of the most stressful experiences in daily life, on par with the stress induced by skydiving.
At Caditz Newman, it is our passion to find ways to increase the benefits of ubiquitous mobility and reduce its costs. We want to create a safe, clean and stress-free transportation infrastructure for the coming generations. We want our grandchildren to think of traffic accidents, car exhaust and road rage as curiousities from the past.
We believe that new horizons are opening with the potential to alter mass mobility for the better. Rapid advances in vehicle technology are dismantling historical limitations on our ability to analyze and manage vehicle traffic. Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) will, in a few short years, enable schemes of vehicle control and routing that will make traffic jams a curiousity of the past. Fleets of 'vehicles as a service' will eliminate the need for parking, opening curbside lanes to traffic flow with no right of way costs. Parking lots will be converted to parklands. Homes will convert garages and driveways to living and recreational space. Vehicle accidents will be all but eliminated.
This utopian view of mass mobility is enabled by real-time information collection and fast control algorithms. We are working on one piece of the puzzle: How to most efficiently route a collection of vehicles from origin to destination. We are studying proactive routing algorithms which prevent congestion and reduce aggregate travel time and energy usage. Our algorithms, based on network theory and game theory, are designed to leverage CAV sensor technology and complete positional awareness.