Q&A: Xianbiao Hu on driving transportation research forward

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Xianbiao "XB" Hu, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Penn State with a Larson Transportation Institute (LTI) affiliation, shared his transportation engineering expertise with President Neeli Bendapudi and others at a visit to LTI’s test track on June 29. Bendapudi was able to test drive an autonomous vehicle and catch up on the latest transportation research conducted at Penn State from XB and others.  

Penn State News spoke with Hu about his research and some of his recent and ongoing projects that address emerging transportation issues affecting drivers in Pennsylvania. 

Q: What is the general focus of your research? What societal problems do you hope to solve with your work?  

Hu: The general focus of my research is to understand the dynamics of transportation systems and travelers’ behavioral adaptations in this era of emerging transportation technologies. We do this with model development and data analysis. We currently focus heavily on two key new transportation technologies: automated vehicles (AV) and transportation electrification. These technologies are often intertwined, such as in Tesla self-driving vehicles. 

As vehicles can drive themselves, and be programmed by computers and algorithms, we hope the future transportation system can have fewer crashes, reduce fuel consumption and enhance sustainability. When it comes to reducing crashes, for example, 94% of traffic accidents are caused by human error — imagine if we remove human error from the equation. For improving sustainability, imagine the traffic queue being much shorter, with less acceleration and braking, thus reducing fuel consumption at intersections. 

Q: What projects are you working on now that you are excited about?  

Hu: We’re working on a couple of exciting projects. The first is a project sponsored by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). In November 2022, Pennsylvania passed a new act to allow highly automated vehicles to drive in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We’re supporting PennDOT to analyze the impact of this new act on the Commonwealth from four aspects: economy, accessibility, workforce and mobility. We will also recommend policy changes, if we find any are needed. The co-principal investigators include Andisheh Ranjbari, the Tracy Early Career Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering; Vikash Gayah, interim director of the Larson Transportation Institute and professor of civil and environmental engineering; Ilgin Guler, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering; and Nikhil Menon, assistant professor of civil engineering at Penn State Harrisburg.  

The second project is sponsored by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The Pennsylvania government received funds as part of the Volkswagen settlement after Volkswagen was fined heavily for cheating on emissions tests and deceiving customers. Pennsylvania is using $39.6 million from the Environmental Mitigation Trust Agreement for State Beneficiaries fund to replace aging diesel fleets with zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), and we’re providing technical support to the DEP. In a phase one project, which we completed in 2023, we advised the DEP on what data to collect and what technology to use, and we also helped them draft a portion of the request for proposal. We’re entering a four-year phase two project where we will collect continuous data from a total of 99 medium- and heavy-duty ZEVs across the commonwealth, including the maintenance costs and charging events of those vehicles. In the end, we will conduct case studies to quantify the benefits of transitioning these vehicles to ZEVs.

Q: How has being at Penn State helped to enable your research? 

Hu: Penn State is awesome. I moved to Penn State in August of 2021 for two reasons: the awesome faculty members here who are world-class researchers and collegial colleagues with whom I can collaborate; and the excellent research facilities available at Penn State, including the full-scale test track originally designed as one of the 10 automated vehicle proving grounds in the nation, and the full-sized automated vehicle, which has been supporting a lot of our research work.