Resources for Students and Instructors

ITS PCB All Levels Workshop #1
March 27-28, 2019 | Florida Department of Transportation District 7 in Tampa, Florida

Day 2 Presentation | March 28, 2019

Navigating ITS Education: Challenges and Innovative Pathways

Presenter: Monty Abbas
Presenter’s Org: Virginia Tech

HTML version of the presentation
Image descriptions are contained in brackets. [ ]

The slides in this presentation contain the Virginia Tech | Invent the Future logo and the Virginia Tech Signal Control & Operation Research and Education Systems (VT-SCORES) Lab logo.

Slide 1: Navigating ITS Education: Challenges and Innovative Pathways

Monty Abbas, Professor
Virginia Tech

ITS PCB Academic Workshop
March 27-28, 2019

[This slide contains a photo of an area on the campus of Virginia Tech at dusk.]

Slide 2: ITS Education!!

Manifold of subjects and needs
Fast-paced technological advancements
Diverse student population

[This slide contains three images: (1) a photo of a person leaning into a gushing fire hydrant on a city street, (2) a clip-art person sitting in the middle of a maze, and (3) a photo of a young man facing away from the camera with his hand outstretched, which can be interpreted to mean “don’t take my picture.”]

Slide 3: Educate and “locate”

[This slide contains a flowchart of three phases, represented by ovals, one above the next, and titled “Goals,” “System,” and “Agents.” In the Goals oval, there is a horizontally-stretched photo of a man in a three piece suit. The System oval is blank. In the Agents oval, there are four photos: a headshot of a man, a small automobile, a five story building, and an electronic device. There are arrows that point from Goals to System and arrows that point from System to Goals. There are multiple lines that connect System to the photos in Agents.]

Slide 4: Educate and engage

[This slide contains a screenshot from a VT-SCORES computer-generated video of a two-roadway intersection.]

Slide 5: Educate and appeal

[This slide contains a screenshot from a VT-SCORES computer-generated video of a passenger car traveling down a wide road. There is a pop-up window with data regarding this “Veh. No. 22.”]

Slide 6: Educate and target concepts

Transportation Areas and Concepts
Area	Topic	Concept
Signal Control	Time-space Diagram	Achieving efficient coordinated operation requires having same cycle length in each controller.
	Offset, Splits, Cycle	The offset parameter can vary between 0 and the cycle length, and can have significant impact on system performance.
	Coordination	Sometimes, delaying vehicles in the beginning of the platoon can result in better overall coordination.
	Shockwaves	Traffic shockwaves that are created because of the change in traffic arrival patterns are important to account for when designing a better coordination plan.

Slide 7: Educate and play: time-space invaders

[This slide contains a graphic of colorful strands, against a black background. There are three distinct columns of the graphic, each with progressively fewer colorful strands.]

Slide 8: Educate and outreach

[This slide contains two images: (1) a photo of a young man looking at a computer screen, which is displaying a grid and (2) a photo of a group of five people in front of a small screen mounted to a wall that is displaying an intersection. Two of the people have their right thumbs up.]

Slide 9: Educate and attract: SONATA

[This slide contains four images: (1) a diagram of the traffic signal phases of an intersection; (2) a vertical bar graph titled “Vehicle Delay (VEH-MIN).” The x axis is labeled Optimal Control, Thomas, Abbas, and Nichols. The vertical bars are color-coded to indicate visual cues, auditory cues, and the webster formula; (3) a photo of a seated person on a stage playing a lute. In the background, on a projector screen, is a computer-generated intersection in a traffic engineering software (likely Vissim); and (4) a photo of three seated people on a stage playing a lute, a violin, and typing, respectively.]

Slide 10: “A” pathway for ITS education

Provide the big picture on transportation (a multi-agent system)
Locate and link concepts to the big picture
Highlight ITS role in related subjects
Educate, attract, and appeal without losing rigor

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