Transportation Technology Tournament
The National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE) and the U.S. DOT ITS JPO PCB program hosted the second annual competition for students to work directly with state and local DOTs to solve real-world transportation problems by utilizing ITS and TSMO solutions.
This tournament focused on identifying a real-world transportation challenge and, as a team, providing a solution for the identified problem.
We formed a team of five members (Brian Staes, Divyamitra Mishra, Nazmus Sakib, Eren Yuksel and Rakesh Rangaswamy) to participate in this tournament representing the University of South Florida; we submitted an initial contest application for the chosen challenge problem – Pedestrian safety at a signalized intersection.
We worked with our academic advisors Dr. Pei-Sung Lin, Dr. Nikhil Menon and Pete Yauch from Albeck Gerken Inc. to learn about potential ITS and TSMO solutions. With the utilization of our experience, education, and coursework, our team developed an ITS solution to address the identified problem directly.
We submitted our solutions via a proposal to NOCoE. Later in May, we heard back from NOCE, saying our team had been selected for the final round and were invited to participate in a live event at ITE 2019 Annual Meeting in Austin, TX.
Later in the month of July we gave a presentation in front of a panel of judges made up of leaders in the ITS and TSMO community at the ITE 2019 annual meeting in Austin. Although we received good comments from the panel of judges for our proposed ITS solution, we did not win the competition.
Overall, I would like to say NOCoE provided several opportunities for us to come up with new and innovative ideas for existing real-world problems. NOCoE has inspired my teammates and me to excel and think outside the box. It has played a crucial role in preparing me for the professional journey that lies ahead of me. I would like to thank NOCoE for helping me attend ITE Annual meeting and for connecting me to the transportation experts!
Rakesh Rangaswamy
Vice-President, USF-ITE
Research Assistant
Center for Urban Transportation Research
University of South Florida.
