Autonomous transportation system (ATS) is composed of five basic elements, namely technology, requirement, service, function and component. With the improvement of technology and requirement, services, functions and components also change in accordance with the interrelations, which reflects as the modes changes like inhibition, replacement, activation and finally results in the evolution of ATS. Based on the existing research of intelligent transportation systems (ITS), there are few studies on guidance or definition to clearly describe the difference of transportation system development, which is called generation definition in this paper. Therefore, research on period division method benefits of planning development route of the intelligent transportation industry, clarify the development stage of transportation system and set development stage goals. This paper explores a method for defining the ATS evolution process based on key components elements, which is through a systematic study of the period definition of various fields at China and abroad. Based on this, combined with the research on component elements, we explore the core indicator of component elements as the key elements of ATS period division. Finally, we verify the rationality of the key elements of ATS period division.

Autonomous Transportation System;Generation Definition;Key Component;Autonomous Metrics