Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 2 No. 2 Summer 2017 | Page 13

The goals of the lab are to continue state-of-the-art
research that contributes to the safety and efficiency of
autonomous, and non-autonomous, driving. The lab works
on both areas because for the foreseeable future, Eskan-
darian believes manual driving will still have a place, as the
transition to autonomous vehicles continues.
With enhanced processing and video, researching
collision avoidance has become far less expensive. As the
technology becomes less expensive, standards are applied
in today’s automobiles.
“If you combine all the safety systems over the last 20
years, you can see that our technology has been preparing
us for autonomous vehicles,” Eskandarian said. “Lane de-
parture warning systems, collision avoidance, sensors that
tell you when you’re approaching a slower moving vehicle;
all of these technologies are the same technologies that
MOMENTUM SUMMER'17
are required for autonomous vehicles. Our automobile
market has, in effect, been preparing us for the transition
to autonomous vehicles.”
For engineers, the future of automobiles centers around
vehicles that can be driven manually or autonomously, and
the ASIM lab provides a safe environment for simulations
that can’t be conducted in a real-life environment.
“People will always enjoy driving and there are times
where you want to drive and enjoy the control of the
car,” Eskandarian said. “But there is always the downside
of driving in traffic, or across miles of flat, monotonous
highway, and autonomy can take the load off the task