The objective of this research is to scale up the capabilities of fully
autonomous vehicles so that they are capable of operating in
mixed-traffic urban environments (e.g., in a city such as Columbus or
even New York or Istanbul). Such environments are realistic large-city
driving situations involving many other vehicles, mostly human-driven.
Moreover, such a car will be in a world where it interacts with other
cars, humans, other external effects, and internal and external software
modules. This is a prototypical CPS with which we have considerable
experience over many years, including participation in the recent DARPA
Urban Challenge. Even in the latter case, though, operation to date has
been restricted to relatively “clean” environments (such as multi-lane
highways and simpler intersections with a few other vehicles). The
approach is to integrate multidisciplinary advances in software, sensing
and control, and modeling to address current weaknesses in autonomous
vehicle design for this complex mixed-traffic urban environment. All
work will be done within a defined design-and-verification cycle.
Theoretical advances and new models will be evaluated both by
large-scale simulations, and by implementation on laboratory robots and
road-worthy vehicles driven in real-world situations.
The research address significant improvements to current methods and
tools to enable a number of formal methods to move from use in limited,
controlled environments to use in more complex and realistic
environments. The theory, tools, and design methods that are
investigated have potential application for a broad class of
cyber-physical systems consisting of mobile entities operating in a
semi-structured environment. This research has the potential to lead to
safer autonomous vehicles and to improve economic competitiveness, the
nation's transportation infrastructure, and energy efficiency. The
richness of the domain means that expected research contributions can
apply not only to autonomous vehicles but, also, to a variety of related
cyber-physical systems such as service robots in hospitals and rescue
robots used after natural disasters. The experimental research
laboratory for the project is used for undergraduate and graduate
courses and supports new summer outreach projects for high-school
students. Research outcomes are integrated with undergraduate and
graduate courses on component-based software.
Off
The Ohio State University
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National Science Foundation
Paolo Sivilotti
Özgüner, Ümit