Autonomous Transportation and Connected Roads Announces First Round of Seed Grant Funding

The Autonomous Transportation and Connected Roads (ATCR) Seed Grant Program awarded three research projects in its first round of competitive funding. Applications came from 10 different schools and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) with co-PIs across disciplines. An internal review consisted of representatives from GTRI and Georgia Tech Parking and Transportation Services, Office of Industry Collaboration, Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, and Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation. The internal review was followed by an external review.

The ATCR is a collaboration between Georgia Tech and external sponsors, including Delta, focused on stimulating research into the possible uses and infrastructure needs of autonomous vehicles in community and business settings. Research teams will conduct activities at the Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners, which includes a 1.5-mile autonomous vehicle test track. Owned by the City of Peachtree Corners, Curiosity Lab is an intelligent mobility and smart city laboratory that provides a unique real-world environment for testing innovative research concepts. Each project was awarded one year of funding, beginning February 1, 2020 and ending January 31, 2021.

The projects are: 

Driving Simulator-Based Study of the Impacts of Various Roadway Design Modifications on the Curiosity Lab Test Track

PI: Srinivas Peeta, Ph.D., Frederick R. Dickerson Chair and Professor, Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Co-PI: Zhu Qing, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

This study aims to understand the role of urban infrastructure modifications on the performance of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in mixed traffic environments, and what infrastructure designs can enhance transportation safety in smart city environments by developing a digital twin of the Curiosity Lab in a high-fidelity driving simulator.

Pickup and Drop-off Facility Design for Autonomous Ground Transportation

PI: Anton Kleywegt, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Georgia Tech H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering

The objectives of this research are to provide insight into the design of pickup and drop-off facilities for on-demand ground transportation and to provide practical computational tools for practitioners to design such facilities, with emphasis on designs in terms of combinations of space constraints and throughput capacity.

Secure and Connected Vehicles

PI: Daniel Cooksey, Ph.D., Senior Research Engineer, Georgia Tech Research Institute

This project will develop a secure and encrypted standard for message traffic using CV technologies including Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) and cellular-vehicle to everything (C-V2X) for use in commercial and military networks that would benefit from a secure channel available to them for proprietary and sensitive information passing between vehicles and assets.