School of Computing Assistant Professor Dr. Naveed Aman, Mid-America Transportation Center (MATC) Professor and Director Dr. Aemal Khattak, and Research Fellow Dr. Muhammad Umer are part of a research effort to enhance non-motorist safety at highway-rail grade crossings (HRGCs) under a $10 million USDOT grant.
This project is a consortium led by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley’s (UTRGV) University Transportation Center for Railway Safety (UTCRS), involving multiple institutions, including MATC. The collaboration focuses on developing, testing, and implementing smart technologies to improve rail safety, with industry partners ensuring practical, impactful innovations. The MATC team is set to receive $750,000 over five years to enhance non-motorist safety at HRGCs. Their research, involving AI and statistical techniques, aims to develop models for non-motorist exposure and improve crash frequency models at HRGCs.
Dr. Naveed Aman, along with School of Computing graduate student Ms. Moomal Bukhari, is partnering with the Mid-America Transportation Center (MATC) to harness Artificial Intelligence (AI) for automating data collection from video cameras at Highway-Rail Grade Crossings (HRGCs). Their work focuses on detecting non-motorist objects and developing more precise crash prediction models. The overarching goal is to design a prototype autonomous risk mitigation system powered by the Internet of Things (IoT) and AI.