January 2026: Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are finding new ways to relieve the sprawling, congested infrastructure surrounding the Forty Acres home to UT. Waymo and Robotaxi services, as well as CapMetro’s nascent self-driving transit buses, are some of the methods being deployed to encourage ridesharing and public transport.
The RNL has developed methods of reliable navigation for autonomous vehicles. This enhanced awareness can improve cooperative maneuvers, such as zipper merges, to speeds impossible for human drivers. “Tight automated zipper merging mimics what water molecules would do as they encounter a bottleneck: fuse together in one stream and speed up, not down, to allow a continual flow,” the RNL’s Dr. Todd Humphreys said.
To learn more about the University of Texas’ contributions to analyzing and managing traffic, read here.
