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Michigan Builds Driverless Town For Testing Autonomous Cars
HughPickens.com writes Highway driving, which is less complex than city driving, has proved easy enough for self-driving cars, but busy downtown streets—where cars and pedestrians jockey for space and behave in confusing and surprising ways—are more problematic. Now Will Knight reports that Michigan's Department of Transportation and 13 companies involved with developing automated driving technology are constructing a 30-acre, $6.5 million driverless town near Ann Arbor to test self-driving cars in an urban environment. Complex intersections, confusing lane markings, and busy construction crews will be used to gauge the aptitude of the latest automotive sensors and driving algorithms and mechanical pedestrians will even leap into the road from between parked cars so researchers can see if they trip up onboard safety systems. "I think it's a great idea," says John Leonard, a professor at MIT who led the development of a self-driving vehicle for a challenge run by DARPA in 2007. "It is important for us to try to collect statistically meaningful data about the performance of self-driving cars. Repeated operations—even in a small-scale environment—can yield valuable data sets for testing and evaluating new algorithms." The testing facility is part of broader work by the University of Michigan's Mobility Transformation Facility that will include putting up to 20,000 vehicles on southeastern Michigan roads. By 2021, Ann Arbor could become the first American city with a shared fleet of networked, driverless vehicles. "Ann Arbor will be seen as the leader in 21st century mobility," says Peter Sweatman, director of the U-M Transportation Research Institute. "We want to demonstrate fully driverless vehicles operating within the whole infrastructure of the city within an eight-year timeline and to show that these can be safe, effective and commercially successful."
Darpa did this a decade ago, google did it 5 years ago, and so did several foreign manufacturers.
I mean, it's a good thing, but it's been more than 30 years since the American Vehicle manufacturing industry was actually on time for a new idea.
Aren't there any towns hit hard enough to be willing to sell themselves out for this purpose such that building a fake town isn't necessary?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If there is one thing Michigan is good for it's testing vehicles in horrible winter conditions with a crumbling road infrastructure. You get the weather for free and if they can just hire MDOT crews to build the roads you should have no problem testing out some of the most difficult conditions a driverless car will face.
...they could just have used Detroit
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Yeah, throw in the random human factor ... cut off the car, turn right from the left lane, ignore speed limits, tailgate, drift from one lane to the other while texting, make unsafe rolling stops through an intersection where even though the car has a green light it's going to have to jam on its brakes, children randomly running into the street, and cyclists who alternate between acting like they're entitled to drive on the road and driving anywhere else that suits them, pedestrians who come out from between cars and don't look.
Hell, put it behind a dump truck spraying gravel. Find a city bus which is going to jam into your lane whether you're in it or not. Ambulances at intersections. A construction detour which technically has you not following any identifiable lanes. Have people run red lights and blow through stop signs.
You know, the kind of stuff we all see every day. Try like hell to find out what its corner cases are. I'm sure they're there.
Teaching it the rules of the road only goes so far. Because many drivers and pedestrians seem oblivious to those.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I am glad they picked a location that experiences Winter in all its harshness. I always wondered how an autonomous car would deal with all the challenges that Winter driving poses. Black ice and snow covered surfaces are the worst of the conditions, but throw in snow patches, high winds, variable visual conditions, etc and the software will probably start showing its weaknesses.
Exactly. Ann Arbor has persistent winter snow and occasional sleet, heavy rain, tornados, and even flooding. Its weather is often a perfect storm for drivers and a far cry from the ideal idyllic settings used so far to test automatic cars.
A2 is the real world. And its mix of academia and auto company proximity make it ideal for this role. Seems like a perfect marriage.
I work about a mile from this. It's on University of Michigan property within the City of Ann Arbor - which might make it within the City of Ann Arbor, except that no property taxes are paid on it and the University of Michigan police have jurisdiction rather than the City of Ann Arbor police. (The University of Michigan is chartered by the state of Michigan such that it operates much like an independent civic body.) So maybe it's in Ann Arbor or maybe it's not, but that's probably sharing too much about the local Town vs. Gown whinging that goes on around here.)
I didn't think I'd ever see anyone claiming that A2 is the real world. It certainly isn't what the surrounding conservative communities think of as real - but a lot of those are still besotted by Saint Ronald Reagan.
The most recent tornado that struck the city with any force was back in 1965, but there have been tornadoes in the area much more recently, some causing significant damage. There is a city-wide system of out-door emergency alert sirens primarily for tornado alerts, although I should hope that the monthly testing of those sirens shouldn't adversely affect the behavior of autonomous vehicles. We do get tornado or other severe weather alerts about 3 to 5 times a year.
Yes, we do get snow, but not as much as areas within 15 miles of the Great Lakes. I'm not sure how good a new, purpose-built facility will be able to reflect the decaying roads and (often) horrible snow clearing conditions that exist in this region. In the city, when the snow does get bad, clearing the roads all the way to the curbs is often not possible (due to cars parked or plowed in) and the streets become narrower, and (last winter) virtual potholes formed in the ice covering the streets (as well as real potholes.) Lane markings in those conditions are nonexistent - and even the edges of the roads can be a matter of guesswork. I don't know if a purpose-built facility can quite replicate the chaos of that - you'd need fleets of trucks and cars going out after the snowfall BUT before the snow and ice was cleared in order to pack the snow into an ice, and even then I don't know how you'd achieve the lumpy, washboard effect. And then you'd need to have students, buses (city and university), taxis, ambulances, deer, and pizza cars dodging around. In a controlled, reproducible way.