Exhibit D - Research Project Requirement: PDF Link

Project Summary: Sporadic transportation demand over large, geographically dispersed rural areas makes conventional fixed-schedule, fixed-route solutions inefficient. This project will develop technology-driven solutions for the development and deployment of microtransit transportation vehicles to address distributed and low-demand transportation needs in rural areas by providing more efficient, customer-focused autonomous transit services via flexible routing and scheduling while interacting with and integrating into other transportation modes. This integrated system of systems and technology-driven approach will lead to efficient transportation solutions by reducing transportation costs due to smaller vehicle sizes and the adoption of ridesharing strategies for transit services in rural and disadvantaged communities.

Realtime Semantic segmentation-based lane detection model for rural roads [GitHub link]

Vision-based perception and control tool for lane keeping of autonomous vehicles validated in  rural roads [GitHub Link]

Robust sliding mode control algorithm for path tracking of autonomous vehicles in challenging terrains [GitHub Link]

• • Jose Matute, Sarah Searcy, Ali Karimoddini, 2025, Aggie Auto Shuttles: Technical Insights from the Public Road Demonstration, Transportation Engineering, Volume 20, June 2025, 100335, DOI: 10.1016/j.treng.2025.100335 

  • Arab, A., Khaleghi, M., Partovi, A., Abbaspour, A., Shinde, C., Mousavi, Y., Azimi, V., Karimoddini, A., 2025, "High-Resolution Safety Verification for Evasive Obstacle Avoidance in Autonomous Vehicles," IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology, vol 6, pp. 276–287. DOI: 10.1109/OJVT.2024.3519951

  • Matute, Jose, Khaleghi, Milad, Karimoddini, Ali, 2024, "Decentralized Most Permissive Observer Architecture for Brake Leakage Diagnosis in Automotive Systems," IEEE ACCESS, Vol. 12, pp. 110457–110468. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.10630519

  • Matute, Jose, Diaz, Sergio, Karimoddini, Ali, 2024, "Sliding Mode Control for Robust Path Tracking of Automated Vehicles," IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology, Vol. 5, pp. 1314–1325. DOI: 10.1109/OJVT.2024.3456035

  • Azage, Michael, Matute, Jose, Karimoddini, Ali, 2024, "Learning from Human Driver Demonstration for Speed Control of Ground Autonomous Vehicles," 2024 IEEE 19th Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA), pp. 1–8. DOI: 10.1109/ICIEA.2024.10664716

  • Getahun, T., Karimoddini, A., 2024, "An Integrated Vision-Based Perception and Control for Lane Keeping of Autonomous Vehicles," IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol. 25, No. 8, pp. 9001–9015. DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2024.3376516

  • Tienake Phuapaiboon, Development of a Testbed of Connected Autonomous Vehicles, Thesis, 2023.

  • Islam, Muhammad Mobaidul, Abdullah Al Redwan Newaz, Li Song, Benjamin Lartey, Shih-Chun Lin, Wei Fan, Ali Hajbabaie Abdullah Homaifar, Ali Karimoddini, "Connected autonomous vehicles: State of practice." Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry (2023), 1-17. DOI: 10.1002/asmb.2772 

  • Jose Matute, Mario Rodriguez-Arozamena, Joshué Pérez Rastelli, Ali Karimoddini , "Sensor Fusion-Based Localization Framework for Autonomous Vehicles in Rural Forested Environments," The 26th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC 2023), Spain, 2023. DOI: 10.1109/ITSC57777.2023.10422436 

  • Tesfamichael Getahun and Ali Karimoddini, "GPS-Guided Vision-Based Lane Detection for Autonomous Vehicles,"  The 26th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC 2023), Spain, 2023. DOI: 10.1109/ITSC57777.2023.10422633

1. A. Karimoddini and C. Spencer, “Aggie Autonomous Shuttle,” NCSITE Safety and SimCap User Group Meeting, Feb 2024, Greensboro, NC.

2. A. Karimoddini, “Autonomous Vehicles: From Sensing to Decision-Making and Control”, keynote speaker, 2024 North Carolina Autonomous Vehicle Symposium.

3. Tienake Phuapaiboon, Jose Matute, Daniel Tobias, Tesfamichael Getahun, Ali Karimoddini. "Development of a Testbed of Connected Autonomous Vehicles," TRB 104th Annual Meeting, 2024.

4. Michael Azage, Jose Matute, and Ali Karimoddini. "Learning from Human Driver Demonstration for Speed Control of Ground Autonomous Vehicles." In 2024 IEEE 19th Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA), Kristiansand, Norway, 05-08 August 2024.

5. Ali Karimoddini, “Autonomy and AI for Advanced Transportation Technologies,” NCDOT, CLEAR Program, Sep 26, 2024.

6. Ali Karimoddini, “AI-Enabled Development and Deployment of Microtransit Autonomous Vehicles in Rural Environments, US DOT Future of Transportation Summit,” Aug 13-15, 2024.

7. Ali Karimoddini, Keynote talk: "Autonomous Vehicles: From Sensing to Decision-Making and Control, Autonomous Vehicle Symposium," Raleigh, April 1, 2024.

8. Ali Karimoddini," Lessons Learned From Aggie Auto Pilot Program," AAMVA Automated Vehicles Information Sharing, June 3, 2024.Jose Matute, Mario Rodriguez-Arozamena, Joshue Perez, and Ali Karimoddini, “Sensor Fusion-Based Localization Framework for Autonomous Vehicles in Rural Forested Environments”, 26th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems ITSC 2023, Spain September 2023.

9. Tesfamchael Getahun, Ali Karimoddini, GPS-guided Vision-based Lane Detection for Autonomous Vehicles, 26th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems ITSC 2023, Spain September 2023.