Transportation is a critical infrastructure for moving people and goods.  With growing concerns of energy supply shortage, global warming, air and noise pollution, disruptive technology is in urgent need to significantly advance and sustain and even improve transportation services. Position papers and panel proposals are sought to identify the new opportunities for the future generation of transportation technologies.

This workshop aims to bring top researchers together to brainstorm high risk, high return research opportunities of interest to RTAS attendencees that could significantly advance the transportation industry. Therefore, we invite radical ideas that could offer quantum leap improvement to transportation services. This meeting is designed to facilitate the process of transforming ideas into practical research plans. Niche directions for the real-time embedded computing community and its partnership with other disciplines  will be tabled for discussion.

In a globally-networked transportation system, vehicles are inexorably linked with information shared at multiple levels of detail and abstraction. Information is shared and processed by mode (e.g., air, on-road, rail), by vehicle payload (e.g., freight, mail, passenger), and by operating environment (e.g., crowded urban area, desolate remote site).  Challenge problems such as delay-free transportation and comprehensive evacuation/disaster response will require breakthrough advances across a spectrum of fundamental and system-level technologies that together form the complete transportation network fabric.  Some illustrative examples of key smart transportation capabilities include:

•  Air and urban traffic management during bottleneck events (bad weather, accidents)

• Increased capacity and throughput given airport and highway infrastructure constraints

• Technologies to enable autonomous short and long-haul air, surface, and multi-modal transportation fleets

• Safety and infrastructure support for vehicles with clean, renewable fuel sources (electric, hydrogen, etc.)

• Ultra-light transport “boxes” for urban commuters

• Rail-guided conveyers for large buildings.

• Systems to enable increased pilot/driver awareness of the environment and vehicle