University of Michigan to Create Fleet of Driverless Vehicles by 2021
The University of Michigan announced a partnership with the Ann Arbor government to create a fleet of networked driverless vehicles by 2021.
“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,” Peter Sweatman, director of the university’s Transportation Research Institute, said in a statement.
The university’s regents recently approved a $6.5 million, 30-acre driverless car test site near the school’s North Campus. The test site is a joint project with industry and government that “will simulate a dynamic cityscape where researchers can test how the vehicles perform in complex urban settings,” a university spokesman told The Associated Press.
Connected-vehicle technology in the trucking industry is scheduled to be discussed during American Trucking Associations’ Executive Summit on Technology-Driven Performance, Analytics and Answers.
The Dec. 4-7 summit at the Four Seasons Dallas at Las Colinas in Irving, Texas, will include a talk by Anthony Levandowski, engineering director of the Google Driverless Car project, and will be headlined by John Ellis, global technologist and head of the Ford Developer Program at Ford Motor Co.
Other summit speakers will include Josh Switkes, CEO of Peloton Technology Inc., and futurist Glen Hiemstra.
