CAV Requirements

Notes and Legal Issues
Functional Requirements
Prior to entering a CAVWAY, each CAV, including its controller and functional elements, will be tested to certify compliance with CAV-System engineering standards. CAV functional requirements fall into two groups. The first group includes capabilities to
  1. accelerate and decelerate,
  2. back up,
  3. steer, and
  4. brake.
The second group includes capabilities to
  1. navigate,
  2. maintain speed,
  3. sense,
  4. change lanes,
  5. monitor health,
  6. send and receive messages, and
  7. observe common protocols.
Critical experiments may be needed to determine whether one or more of these requirements present special research challenges.
Navigate
Each CAV will receive an accurate CAVWAY map, updated as needed by CC and delivered by CAVNET, showing navigation coordinates, work zones, blockages, detours, and merges. The CAV will use that map to follow its own assigned route, from origin to destination, maintaining proper speed and lane position. CAV navigation will require the support of a reliable CAVWAY navigation system.
Maintain speed
Fully loaded CAVs will need to maintain constant speeds on CAVWAYs built along existing roadways, where slopes can be as steep as 7%. The need to maintain a constant speed on a 7% grade will impose power and braking (or down-shifting) requirements and weight restrictions, limits which will be established through critical experiments.
Sense
Each CAV will need to sense when an adjacent space (or box*) is clear and whether it is safe to change lanes.
Monitor health
Each CAV will monitor its own health, including fuel and other fluid levels, pressures, temperatures, voltages, etc. This capability will be verified through critical experiments.
Send and receive messages
Each CAV
  1. will be a CAVNET subscriber, able to format and send messages to CC describing its current health and
  2. receive, vote on, and interpret redundant messages from CC.
Observe Common Protocols
These are discussed here.
Notes on Functional Requirements
As a result of algorithm improvements, some rigid requirement (e.g., maintain speed) might be relaxed, to allow for slowing up steep grades.
Although in principle, the CAVWAY would alert CAVs to hazards in their paths, CAVs would also need to sense, report, and avoid such hazards.

Legal issues
To understand the legal issues that CAVs have already begun to face, we need only consider the legal framework that surrounds automobile travel, automobile standards, driver licensing and liability, automobile registration, and insurance. While CAVWAYs and CAVs will be safer than current highways and vehicles, the need for laws, standards, licensing, and insurance governing CAV operations is clear.
Standards and Licensing
Under the CAV-System Concept, requirements on CAVs to operate on CAVWAYs will be more clearly defined and more limited than requirements on CAVs operating in present-day uncontrolled space. Nonetheless, to assure the safety of travelers and CAVs, a state agency will need to verify that a CAV meets those requirements (standards) before permitting that CAV to operate on State CAVWAYs.
Registration
One difference between CAV licensing and present-day automobile licensing processes is that, since CAVs are self-driving, one licensing process will cover two (driver licensing and car registration) current processes.
Insurance
Although Davius expects CAVs to be much safer than current automobiles with drivers, CAVs will nonetheless need to be insured. That said, Davius refuses to predict how the states will set liability and responsibility guidelines and how insurance companies will compute premiums. Over time, Davius expects this to be reduced to a background issue.