New Features [Editor's Column]

In being committed to bringing excellence in ITS to our readership, we decided to extend the current content of the Magazine. Thus, this edition includes a new section on “Artificial Intelligence Technologies for ITS” which is aimed at attracting short (up to 4-pages) manuscript submissions on either recently developed or recently implemented AI & Machine Learning methods, especially big data analysis, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, deep learning, virtual reality, augmented reality, virtual sensing, augmented sensing, artificial cognition, knowledge automation, IoT, etc., in transportation systems & services. I have therefore asked our distinguished colleague, Fei-Yue Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese National University of Defense Technology, who is also the Immediate Past EiC of the Society’s flagship periodical, Transactions on ITS, to share his enthusiasm and keen research interest into the AI field, in the context of ITS, and encourage you all to consider submitting your contributions to this new, peer-reviewed, section of the Magazine. An additional novelty introduced in this edition is the outcome of our dedication to provide the ITS community with an opportunity to easier access and share research data. Thus, this edition brings a new column on “PhD & MPhil Theses’ Abstracts”. I would like to invite you all to keep submitting needed information by contacting the Column Editors, Fernando García Fernández of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, and Zhixiong Li of the University of Central Florida, U.S.A. I am sure that we will all benefit from having this information at hand from now on. A number of aspects of relevance to ITS deployment are addressed by papers selected for this edition of ITS Magazine including interconnected vehicle scenarios, co-operative vehicle-to-pedestrian situations and bus-priority measures. Among these topics is the aspect of two-way interactions between human drivers and their partially automated vehicles—the topic which was also selected for profiling the cover page of this edition of the Magazine. It prompted me to invite you to consider submitting a special issue proposal on partially automated and fully automated vehicles as further research into these interactions will bring a step change, not only to transportation system services in years to come but, to our contemporary driving habits as well. Nobody knows the direction this change will take. I greatly wish for it to be a positive change for the betterment of humanity. At this transition stage the automated vehicle developers have full freedom in envisaging a level of automation they wish to assign to their vehicles and, moreover, freedom in envisaging a way of deploying automated driving functions and, thus, shaping interactions between partially automated vehicles and their human drivers. I therefore wish to see our community take this transition stage as an opportunity towards shaping an ITS technology–enabled Future of the Transportation before it is New Features editorial board