Irvine Races to a Driverless Future
The future of driving is coming to Irvine. Photo credit Atul Vinayak
Irvine is leading the charge to improve traffic and develop autonomous driving technology through a large UCI-based collaboration and a massive grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Within UCI’s Samueli School of Engineering is the HORIBA Institute for Mobility and Connectivity2 (HIMaC2), which has been awarded a $6M grant to establish a Public Road Network Platform. The platform will develop, evaluate, and deploy emerging and future technologies for autonomous vehicle driving.
The grant, awarded by the Vehicle Technology Office of the DOE, will equip 25 intersections at UCI and the city of Irvine with a next-generation LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging)-based traffic sensor. In collaboration with the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), the UCI Institute of Transportation Studies, Velodyne Lidar, Bluecity Technology, Toyota Motor of North America, Pony.ai, and Hyundai Mobis, the team will study how traffic coordination can improve energy efficiency, traffic efficiency, air quality, and safety.
“The city of Irvine is widely recognized for its vision in transportation planning and execution,” says Mayor Farrah Khan. “We welcome fostering our close working relationship with UCI and pioneering the future of connected and autonomous vehicles with the goal of further improving, for our citizens, traffic safety and traffic flow.”
Three fleets of ten vehicles each with distinct modes of operation (independent driving, shared-use driving, and autonomous) will be utilized, and a workforce training program will also be developed in collaboration with Saddleback College.
“The public-private partnership catapults Irvine as a leading international contributor to the future of connected and autonomous transportation,” says Principal Investigator and UCI Engineering Professor Scott Samuelsen. “By deploying automated monitoring and control in an intersection network, backbone data can be generated and utilized to demonstrate the improved safety, energy efficiency, and traffic flow to which cities aspire."
Learn more about the HORIBA Institute of Mobility and Connectivity2 here.