from Romeo Samoy, Chair; and Michael Larsen, Co-Chair, SAE J3134 Task Force
Automated Driving System (ADS)-equipped vehicles will shortly be available in the market. Studies show that road users would like ADS-equipped vehicles to have additional signals to indicate when the vehicle’s ADS is engaged and to indicate the vehicle’s intended movements. NHTSA’s Federal Automated Vehicles Policy also supports the need for ADS-equipped vehicles to communicate with pedestrians and other road users to improve road users perceived safety and comfort level, as ADS-equipped vehicles are introduced.
Additional lamps are a means of identifying ADS-equipped vehicles and communicating the ADS-equipped vehicle’s movement or intended movement. There are many lighting concepts and proposals for ADS-equipped vehicles within the US and internationally. There is no standard today. It is important to create and establish a standard for ADS lamps and signals that is harmonised and recognised internationally to avoid confusion and complexity.
SAE J3134 – Automated Driving System (ADS)-Equipped Vehicle Lamps will provide the standardised solutions to meet these needs. It provides guidelines for the use, performance, installation, activation, and switching of marking and signaling lamps on Automated Driving System (ADS)-equipped vehicles, i.e., those equipped with levels 3, 4 or 5 features as defined in SAE J3016—Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to Driving Automation Systems for On-Road Motor Vehicles. These lamps are intended to communicate to road users the status of the vehicle’s ADS, active or not active, and the ADS’s motive intentions, i.e. movement or change in movement.
The J3134 task force was created in February of 2017 by the SAE Lighting Systems Group members, who recognised that development of automated driving vehicles were progressing rapidly and that there were many proposals on vehicle lighting and V2P (vehicle to pedestrian) communications.
The task force has been meeting monthly since last February, and currently has over 75 members. Included in the task force are representatives from most of the major automakers and tier-1 and -2 lighting suppliers, as well as researchers and GTB members representing the international lighting community. The main topics include signals/messages needed, how to communicate these signals/messages with lights, the location, colour, and photometry of the lamps, installation, etc.
J3134 ADS proposed messages are:
- “Vehicle’s ADS is engaged”
- “Vehicle’s ADS is yielding”
- “Vehicle’s ADS is transitioning from yielding to not yielding”
Several vehicles have been reviewed and are still being studied at UMTRI (the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute) and VTTI (Virginia Tech Transport Institute).
The goal of J3134 task force is to lead the global harmonisation efforts of ADS lamps that automated driving vehicles would use to communicate with pedestrians and other road users, and to create a high-quality standard that can be used globally as a guide. There are growing discussions worldwide on this subject and it is the task force’s hope that practitioners, academics, and regulators outside North America will look at J3134 and participate in its development rather than starting from scractch to develop their own standards. The target is to publish a finished version of SAE J3134 this year.
