Mini Autonomous Vehicles Developed to Aid Researchers

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Researchers at the Oregon State University have recently been experimenting with miniature vehicles to help study and promote autonomous vehicle safety. With the help of a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the research will be made in order to increase the safety, performance, and the security of self driving vehicles.

As part of a collaborative effort with the University of Pennsylvania and Clemson University, researchers all across the United States will receive a ten-to-one scale of an autonomous vehicle  to run tests and experiments.

Miniature cars are used instead of regular sized cars since smaller cars and safer and cheaper to experiment with. A base model of a full scale autonomous vehicle can cost researchers over $300 thousand, with some researchers even stating that their autonomous vehicle, with all the equipment needed for experimentation onboard, cost upwards of $700 thousand.

In contrast, the much cheaper and safer miniature cars will be free use for over 30 different labs collaborating on the grant, as reported by Eurekalert.org.

Over the next three years, a fleet of approximately 80 miniature autonomous cars will be developed in order to support experiments of autonomous systems. The cars will also be used to assist with teaching and demonstrating new autonomous technologies.

The researchers receiving the cars will be able to add code, design, and documentation, therefore advancing the infrastructure of autonomous systems. “The objective is to enable and catalyze research on autonomous systems for research groups that normally would not have the means, the resources or the skills to build an autonomous car,” said Houssam Abbas, one of the project’s main investigator and an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Oregon State.