REU Site: Cognitive and Autonomous Test (CAT) Vehicle

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This site is co-funded by the Department of Defense in partnership with the NSF REU program. The motivation for this project is to engage students with the wide range of research topics and applications related to autonomous ground vehicles. The REU Site provides research experience for 10 students for 10 weeks in the summer for 3 years. The participants are engaged in collaborative work with graduate students doing research in the fields of autonomous systems and cognitive radio. The project approach utilizes a spiral development process for participant projects, which enables participants to see how a research problem can be decomposed, and also enables each year of the project to build upon previous projects. The process focuses on requirements verification and testing, and thus enables a safe interaction with the Cognitive and Autonomous Test Vehicle (CAT Vehicle). The CAT Vehicle is a full-sized Ford Escape robotic car that employs various sensors that can be used to make the car drive autonomously, or that can be used when the car is under human control to test new techniques or sensing algorithms. Participants are expected to gain experience and produce research results and publications in areas related to cognitive radio, wireless communications, autonomous control systems, and model-based design, among others.The REU Site will have a significant impact on the participating students who will gain experience in writing academic publications, preparing and giving presentation, and in articulating the story of their compelling research problem and its solution. The project is expected to produce artifacts that will increase visibility of the performed work, including a video describing their project journey that lends itself to broad dissemination of a participant's contribution once they return to their home institution. Participants gain expertise in what it means to design components of a system as pervasive as an automobile. Such experience and motivation is needed for participants to later go on to explore problems in the smart grid, next-generation wireless networks, alternative energy, and other issues that have impact on a societal-scale. The REU Site project web site (http://reu.ece.arizona.edu/) provides additional information.