The site has many familiar features of urban driving, including intersections, a railroad crossing, two roundabouts, brick and gravel roads and parking spaces. There’s even “Sebastian”, an engineered pedestrian that can step into traffic to test whether the vehicles can sense him and act accordingly.
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Driverless cars don’t have to worry about hitting pedestrians in Mcity, a 32-acre fake town that opened Monday at the University of Michigan.
Construction on Mcity began past year with a $10 million investment.
Peter Sweatman, the director of the Mobility Transformation Center, claims other check sites in and Japan have some of the identical features, but the Michigan web site is one particular of the most superior autonomous auto or truck screening grounds in the environment. They will also be testing semi-autonomous and driverless cars at the website. It receives funding from major companies including Ford, General Motors, Honda, Nissan, Delphi, State Farm and Toyota, in addition to the University of Michigan and the state’s Department of Transportation.
The university wanted to simulate environments that pose the greatest challenges to automated vehicles.
Google began running trials with its self-driving cars a few months ago at its Mountain View, California, headquarters.
The Internet search giant has been testing self-driving cars since 2009, with its autonomous models being involved in accidents 14 times, of which eleven incidents involved rear-end crashes. One of his requests: Filthy, mud-splashed street signals, so that automakers can make certain their cameras can however study them.
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Sweatman said the site will also leave a lot of snow on the ground in the winter, so that automakers can make sure that the cameras and radar used in driverless systems will still work in the snow.
