MRI: Development of an Autonomous, Connected and Data-Driven Vehicle for Multi-Disciplinary Research and Project-Based Learning

该项目开发了一款联网的自动驾驶汽车，旨在创建WAVE，这是一个供教职员工和学生研究无人驾驶汽车的多个方面的共享“实时”试验床/平台。涉及研究、实验和数据收集，这些方面包括：安全性、可靠性、性能、连通性、交互和社会影响。与过去十年的无线通信研究历史类似，研究人员经常利用SDR平台来构建和评估他们提出的通信系统。随着联网和自动驾驶汽车在未来上路，将会有很多问题。对于这些研究项目来说，原型车成为收集数据、进行实验和验证概念的绝对必要。整个大学的教职员工和学生将共享这张“现场”实验床，以执行他们的研究和教育使命。大量的研究活动和学生项目将利用这一工具，它将服务于促进多学科研究和基于项目的学习的双重目的。该仪器将使涉及但不限于计算机视觉和机器学习、V2V和V2I通信、最佳控制和可靠性、大数据分析、人机交互、驾驶员行为和人为因素、社会影响和自动驾驶车辆政策的多学科研究活动成为可能。尽管完全自动驾驶汽车目前还不能商业化，但可以很容易地集成传感器、处理平台和线控驾驶设备等关键组件来构建原型。仪器开发团队由来自多个领域的专家组成，包括机器人、电气和机械工程以及计算机科学。主要工作不仅包括硬件/传感器安装，还包括车辆控制、数据处理和路径规划的软件开发。与文献中的自动驾驶汽车样车相比，所提出的WAVE试验台具有三个新的特性。它将是一款1.互联车辆，配备可以评估V2V(车辆对车辆)和V2I(车辆对基础设施)主动安全系统的DSRC(专用短程通信)模块；2.数据驱动的平台，将从道路、车辆和司机收集大数据；这些数据将与研究社区公开共享；3.大学教职员工为基于项目的学习开发课程的现实世界工具，这将通过本科生研究增强学生体验。

This project, developing a connected and autonomous vehicle, aims to create WAVE, a shared 'live' testbed/platform for faculty and students to investigate many aspects of the driveless car. Involving research, experiments, and data collection, these aspects include: safety, reliability, performance, connectivity, interaction, and social impacts. Similar to the history of wireless communications research over the past decade, researchers often utilized SDR platforms to prototype and evaluate their proposed communication systems. As connected and autonomous cars hit the road in the future, there will be many issues. A prototype vehicle becomes absolutely necessary for these research projects to collect data, conduct experiments, and prove concepts. The 'live' testbed will be shared by faculty and students across the university to carry out their research and educational missions. A large number of research activities and student projects will utilize this instrument, which will serve the dual purposes of enabling multidisciplinary research and project-based learning. The instrument will enable multidisciplinary research activities that involve, but are not limited to, computer vision and machine learning, V2V and V2I communications, optimal controls and reliability, big data analysis, human-robot interactions, driver behavior and human factors, social impacts and autonomous vehicle policies.Although a fully autonomous car is not currently commercially available, key components such as sensors, processing platforms, and drive-by-wire devices can readily be integrated to build a prototype. The instrument development team consists of experts from multiple fields, including robotics, electrical, and mechanical engineering, as well as computer science. The main efforts not only includes the hardware/sensors installation, but also the software development for vehicle control, data processing, and path planning. Comparing to the autonomous vehicle prototypes in the literature, the proposed WAVE testbed exhibits three new properties. It will be a 1. Connected vehicle equipped with DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications) modules that can evaluate V2V (Vehicle-to Vehicle) and V2I (Vehicle to Infrastructure) active-safety systems; 2. Data-driven platform that will collect big data from roads, vehicles, and drivers; the data will be shared openly with the research community; 3. Real-world tool for university faculty to develop curriculum for project-based learning which will enhance student experience through undergraduate research.