On July 20, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor opened Mcity, a 32-acre simulated urban and suburban controlled environment, designed specifically to test the potential of connected and automated vehicle technologies.
The $6.5 million project comprises a five-mile stretch of roads, some of them up to five lanes. Mcity includes rearrangeable architecture such as buildings, streetlights, parked cars, traffic lights and stop signs, sidewalks, and other obstacles. Robotic pedestrians and mechanized bikes roam throughout Mcity.
The miniature city is developed and designed by the university’s two-year-old Interdisciplinary Mobility Transformation Center, a partnership of several automotive companies, the Michigan Department of Transportation, researchers from UM’s Transportation Research Institute, and its College of Engineering.
“The initiative demonstrates the great potential in working with partners outside the University to address compelling issues of broad impact,” said UM’s president Mark Schlissel. NPR reports that 15 companies, which include Ford, GM, and Nissan, paid $1 million each to help build Mcity.
Companies like Google, Toyota, Uber, and Apple have been working on self-driving technologies that rely on GPS, radar and remote sensors known as LIDAR. So far the test results have been impressive, albeit in a limited sense. Experts anticipate that driverless streets and highways could be a common reality within the next 10 to 15 years. The real challenge, though, is getting driverless cars to react to and interact with how humans drive.
Google, which began its self-driving project in 2009, currently averages 10,000 autonomous miles per week on public streets. Over six years of testing through May 2015, its driverless vehicles had been involved in 12 minor accidents during more than 1.8 million miles of autonomous and manual driving combined. “Not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident,” claims Google in a recent progress report. However, Google’s test cars rarely go beyond 25 miles per hour and so far have been limited to roads the car’s computers have already analyzed.
As the New York Times reported earlier this month, autonomous vehicles right now are programmed to drive overly cautiously, compared with humans’ typically aggressive driving habits. Autonomous cars “have to learn to be aggressive in the right amount, and the right amount depends on the culture,” Donald Norman, director of the Design Lab and the University of California, San Diego was quoted as saying.
Mcity, then, provides a testing ground for driverless cars in unpredictable conditions.
“There are many challenges ahead as automated vehicles are increasingly deployed on real roadways,” explains Peter Sweatman, director of the U-M Mobility Transformation Center. “Mcity is a safe, controlled and realistic environment where we are going to figure out how the incredible potential of connected and automated vehicles can be realized quickly, efficiently and safely.”
NPR quotes university researchers who are hoping to have 20 to 30 automated cars driving around Ann Arbor’s streets within the next six years.
Related Stories
| Oct 18, 2011
St. Martin’s Episcopal School expands facilities
Evergreen commences construction on environmentally sustainable campus expansion.
| Sep 29, 2011
Busch Engineering, Science and Technology Residence Hall opens to Rutgers students
With a total development cost of $57 million, B.E.S.T. is the first on-campus residence hall constructed by Rutgers since 1994.
| May 18, 2011
Major Trends in University Residence Halls
They’re not ‘dorms’ anymore. Today’s collegiate housing facilities are lively, state-of-the-art, and green—and a growing sector for Building Teams to explore.
| May 18, 2011
Former Bronx railyard redeveloped as shared education campus
Four schools find strength in numbers at the new 2,310-student Mott Haven Campus in New York City. The schools—three high schools and a K-4 elementary school—coexist on the 6.5-acre South Bronx campus, which was once a railyard.
| May 18, 2011
Eco-friendly San Antonio school combines history and sustainability
The 113,000-sf Rolling Meadows Elementary School in San Antonio is the Judson Independent School District’s first sustainable facility, with green features such as vented roofs for rainwater collection and regionally sourced materials.
| May 18, 2011
New Reform Jewish Independent school opens outside Boston
The Rashi School, one of only 17 Reform Jewish independent schools in North American and Israel, opened a new $30 million facility on a 166-acre campus shared with the Hebrew SeniorLife community on the Charles River in Dedham, Mass.
| May 18, 2011
Addition provides new school for pre-K and special-needs kids outside Chicago
Perkins+Will, Chicago, designed the Early Learning Center, a $9 million, 37,000-sf addition to Barrington Middle School in Barrington, Ill., to create an easily accessible and safe learning environment for pre-kindergarten and special-needs students.
