Students participating in the STRIDE Center’s Transportation Research Internship Program (TRIP) concluded the program on Friday, July 31, 2015 with presentations related to their individualized summer projects.
Interns & Presentation Descriptions:
Zoe Becerra of Morehead University/GaTech presented on “A Method to Assess the Effectiveness of Auditory Stimuli to Return Distracted Attention in a Simulated Driving Task.” The presentation focused on explaining her experimental design for investigating whether an audio stimulus can guide a driver’s attention back to the road when they are distracted. During the study, participants watched a 20-minute video of a simulated drive and indicated when they entered and exited a passing zone; the video contained visual distractors on each side of the road at two different magnitudes. An eye tracker monitored eye movements throughout the task. If a participant’s gaze focused away from the road, a 50 millisecond pure tone eas presented in an effort to redirect their attention back to the road.
Bianca Farias de Souza of the University of Sao Paulo in Sao Paulo, Brazil gave her presentation on “Analysis of Well-Being Measures of Sadness, Happiness and Stress on Travel Activities”. Bianca’s work was on the broad area of travel and quality of life. In her presentation, she described her work analyzing data on daily time use and measures of wellbeing (such as happiness and stress) from the American Time Use Surveys. She also spoke about using ordered response models to assist her in identifying a multitude of factors that were associated with making a trip “more happy” or “more stressful” for the traveler. (Bianca’s internship was sponsored by the Brazilian Science Mobility Program)
Guilherme Pfeffer of the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil presented on “The Future of Driverless Cars”. Gullherme spoke on analysis of market projections and preferences that he conducted, including the future/growth of driverless cars in the next 10 to 40 years. (Gulherme’s internship was sponsored by the Brazilian Science Mobility Program)
Mario Rojas of Florida International University spent the summer exploring the use of cellular data in transportation studies. The team’s work culminated in the submission of two papers to TRB for presentation/publication at its National Meeting in Washington D.C. (January 2016). The titles of the two papers are: “A Comprehensive Review of Travel Behavior and Mobility Pattern Studies Using Mobile Phone Data” (Rojas, Sadeghvaziri, Jin) and “Exploring the Potential of Mobile Phone Data in Travel Behavior Analysis” (Sadeghvaziri, Rojas, Jin).
Stephen Spana of the University of Florida presented on developing simulation in a program called NetLogo with two PhD students to observe how increasing the communication range of the customer (the range over which a customer can summon a taxi) effected properties like customer wait time and customer demand. Using the simulation, Spana observed that increasing the customer’s communication range decreased the customer’s wait time, and allowed the network to handle a higher customer demand.
Ethan Stoop of the University of Florida presented on “Development and Testing of SwashSIM ATDM Software.” Ethan spoke about working with Dr. Scott Washburn and Don Watson (a doctoral student) on the development and beta testing of SwashSIM. The presentation also included his involvement with analyzing truck performance on grade, friction demand on a curve, minimum speed on a curve and acceleration and deceleration for a curve.
Tianfa Wu of the University of Florida presented on “Algorithm for Optimizing Signal Control with Automated Vehicles in the Traffic Stream”. Tianfa spoke about his involvement in documenting in detail a previously developed algorithm to facilitate future development.
William Wagner of the University of Alabama at Birmingham presented on “Road Users’ Perception and Reaction to Conceptually Different Driving Hazards.” The study he worked on attempted to determine if drivers perceive and react to road hazards differently based on whether the hazard is a motor vehicle, termed “non-social” or a visible human, such as a pedestrian or cyclist, termed “social.”
For more information on the STRIDE Center’s internship program, visit: http://stride.ce.ufl.edu/internship-opportunities.