University at Buffalo Receives Grant to Build Research Facility for Driverless Vehicle Research

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The University at Buffalo has received a grant worth $1.2 million from the National Science Foundation, to create a research facility dedicated to driverless and connected vehicle research. The university will contribute $500,000 to the initiative.

“This significant award is a statement of confidence in the innovative work happening right here at the University at Buffalo,” said Brian Higgins, U.S. Representative for New York's 26th congressional district, via the school’s website.

Liesl Folks, PhD, dean of the University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, added, “the grant builds upon the University at Buffalo’s robust and interdisciplinary research enterprise that works to make traffic systems smarter, safer and more sustainable.”

The main use of the facility will be to test a research platform called Instrument for Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Evaluation and Experimentation (iCAVE2). iCAVE2 will connect the university’s driving, traffic and wireless network simulators with a gadget equipped vehicle, to create realistic, virtual traffic scenarios for the testing of driverless technologies.

iCAVE2 and the connected vehicle will also be synchronized with a one-mile stretch of the university’s campus, that includes road sensors, wireless access points and other equipment, in an effort to collect data that can improve the simulators, as well as algorithms and other framework needed to operate driverless and connected vehicles.

According to project lead Chunming Qiao, PhD, who is also a professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the university, the marriage of driving simulators with road testing facilities is uncommon, but the results could be extremely beneficial.

“Traditionally, driving simulators and road testing facilities have operated independently of each other” Qiao said. “With iCAVE2, we are bridging that gap and creating a space where academia, information technology companies, automakers and other industries can evaluate and validate their products.”

Joining the University at Buffalo in this research initiative are Carnegie Mellon University, Cisco Systems and Southwest Research Institute.

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