TR News 348: Fresh Perspectives: Artificial Intelligence Frontiers in Transportation

AI technologies have fueled advances in autonomous driving and intelligent transportation systems, for example, enabling the public in Phoenix, San Francisco, and other cities to hail a self-driving taxi from their smartphone apps. Transportation professionals also are tapping computer-vision technologies to manage transportation assets, collect traffic data, and dynamically adjust traffic signals. Despite such promising developments, many who work in transportation continue to see AI as a theoretical concept in a black box and don’t know how to successfully deploy projects that could enhance safety and human decision making in the real world.

"Artificial Intelligence Frontiers in Transportation," by Bo Wang, David Reinke, and Yinhai Wang, highlights several successful transportation applications as well as the challenges and risks of implementing them. In addition, a few suggestions are offered on how to successfully apply AI technology in transportation. The article appears free online from the January-March 2024 edition (Issue 348) of TR News, TRB's quarterly magazine.

TR News features timely articles on innovative and state-of-the-art research practice in all modes of transportation. It also includes brief news items of interest to the transportation community and research pays off articles, profiles of transportation professionals, workshop and conference announcements, new book notices, and news of TRB activities. Submissions of manuscripts for possible publication are accepted at any time. 

Copies of TR News may be purchased individually or ordered on an annual subscription basis by emailing TRBsales@nas.edu. TRB policy is to release the full PDF version of a TR News four months after its release in print format.