Mission

The Northland Advanced Transportation Systems Research Laboratory (NATSRL) was established in March 2001 as an advanced research program to develop innovative technologies for safe, productive, and sustainable transportation systems in northern areas.

Current research focus areas include:

• Advanced sensing technologies for traffic/driver/pedestrian/pavement condition detection and measurements
• Vehicle and driver safety technologies
• New wireless communication technologies that can support vehicle-infrastructure integration
• Alternative power technologies for ITS operations
• Advanced winter road maintenance strategies including optimum snow/ice treatment methods
• New strategies for improving safety and operational efficiency of traffic and freight flows under normal and inclement weather conditions

Partnership

Since its inception, NATSRL has been supported by the ITS Institute, University of Minnesota, with funding from U.S. DOT under the SAFETEA-LU, as well as contributions from local partnership agencies including Minnesota Department of Transportation, St. Louis County and City of Duluth. Representatives from these partnership agencies have been actively participating in NATSRL activities including the identification of research problems, reviewing proposals, providing data for research, and managing research projects as the members of the Research Advisory Panel or Advisory Board.

News

Ryan Dowld (Senior, SCSE) and Shan Hu (Graduate Student, SCSE)

NATSRL research group represented USA at the Global Competition Dr. Xun Yu’s group, which is developing a non-intrusive driver drowsiness detection system at NATSRL, was one of 3 student teams that represented USA at the Global Competition for Safe Vehicle Design (June 13-18, 2009, Germany). Ryan Bowlds (Senior, SCSE) and Shan Hu (Graduate Student, SCSE) had demonstrated their driver drowsiness detection system at the Global Competition in Germany.

NATSRL Research extended to NSF Grant National Science Foundation recently awarded $125,000 to Dr. Xun Yu for his proposal to develop '‘Self-sensing Concrete Pavement". Dr. Yu has been working on developing a Carbon Nanotube-enhanced Intelligent Pavement for Traffic Flow Detection at NATSRL and the results from this work were used as the basis for his NSF proposal.

Carbon Nanotube-enhanced Cement