Imagine a town with
crosswalks but no pedestrians, cars and trucks but no drivers. Welcome to
Mcity, a fake "town" built by researchers who are testing out the
driverless cars of the future.
The
controlled test environment, which opened today (July 20) at the University of
Michigan (U-M) in Ann Arbor, covers 32 acres (the size of about 24 football
fields) and contains all the trappings of a real suburb or small city. There is
an entire network of roads lined with sidewalks, streetlights, stop signs and
traffic signals. There's even a "downtown" area complete with fake
building facades and outdoor dining areas.
The
idea behind City is simple: test out new driverless car in a human-free
environment before these technologies are unleashed in the real world. "City
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," Peter Sweat man, director of
the Mobility Transformation Center (MTC) at U-M, said.
The
roads of Mcity are built to stand up to "rigorous, repeatable"
testing, according to MTC officials. While Mcity drivers don't have to contend
with real pedestrians, there will be one mechanical foot-traveler (a robot like
machine named Sebastian) that steps out into traffic to see whether the
automated cars can hit the brakes in time. The simulated city also features a
traffic circle, a bridge, a tunnel, some unpaved roads, and even a four-lane
highway with entrance and exit ramps, In addition to evaluating fully
automated cars , the researchers
also hope to test out so-called connected vehicles within City’s limits.
Connected cars can either communicate with one another (vehicle-to-vehicle
control, or V2V) or with pieces of equipment, such as traffic lights, that are
located near roadways (vehicle-to-infrastructure control, or V2I).
Even
the smallest details of Mcity have been planned out in advance to replicate
conditions that connected and automated vehicles could face in the real world.
For example, there are street signs covered up with graffiti, and faded yellow
and white lane markings line the streets.
Mcity
is just one part of a much larger project that MTC and its partner
organizations are establishing in an effort to get a whole fleet of connected
and driverless cars on the road in Ann Arbor by 2021. In addition to the fake
city, MTC is also continuing to launch connected and semi-autonomous cars on
real roadways. Eventually, the University of Michigan and the Michigan
Department of Transportation said they hope to put 20,000 connected cars on the
roads of southern Michigan.
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