Autonomous
vehicle
laboratory
provides for
realistic
testing
The newest laboratory in Mechanical Engineering is
the Autonomous Systems and Intelligent Machines
(ASIM) lab, and it’s home to a tiny town with robotic
vehicles and a full-sized smart car.
The lab provides data-driven, scientific insight into
how people interact with automated vehicle sys-
tems — a crucial element to real-world testing that
improves transportation systems on a global scale.
The lab is split into two experiential learning areas
to provide a broader picture of an autonomous
environment. Half the lab is laid out to mimic a
small town, complete with street patterns, road
markings, and miniature buildings. Robotic vehicles
equipped with vision systems, proximity sensors, and
inter-vehicle communications own the road, their
sensors allowing them to sense presence and distance,
communicate with each other, and navigate without
colliding.
The mini town is equipped with an overhead
vision system that emulates GPS. The system gives a
ground-truth relationship of the vehicle in relation to
the floor map, and the environment helps researchers
develop safety and control algorithms that allow ve-
hicles to follow each other and gain efficiency – speed
– while in a platoon.
“Anyone can make a slow-moving autonomous
vehicle,” said Azim Eskandarian, ASIM lab director
and head of the mechanical engineering department.
“But autonomy for its own sake isn’t enough – it also
has to be efficient. We look at how to determine the