Mum’s the word at Mcity. Engineers, designers and manufacturers are assured of complete confidentiality as they develop the latest technologies for connected and automated vehicles at the University of Michigan’s 32-acre educational testing site.
An aerial view of the Mcity Test Facility, which sits on a 32-acre site and features about 16 acres of roads and traffic infrastructure.
While expert automotive consultations are readily available to assist the clientele if desired, “We don’t ask users to disclose their testing plans,” says Susan Carney, Mcity’s director of marketing and communications.
And even if such information were to become available, you wouldn’t be reading about it on this page. “It is a closed facility, and the work done here is private,” she emphasizes.
“We don’t disclose specific information about who is using Mcity because, like most automotive proving grounds, it is a closed facility and any work done there is confidential,” adds Dr. Huei Peng, the center’s director who is also U-M’s Roger L. McCarthy Professor of Mechanical Engineering. “But since its opening in 2015, Mcity has been in demand for testing and research as well as for informational visits by government officials and media.”
“The Mcity Test Facility is essentially a mock city,” Carney tells Aftermarket Business World, “with an urban area, a stretch of highway, roundabouts, traffic lights and crosswalks, a tunnel and more. It was designed to support safe, repeatable testing of connected and automated vehicles and technologies in a real-world, controlled environment before trying them out on public roads.”
As a public-private R&D partnership, more than 100 undergrad and graduate students under the direction of 50 faculty members at the school’s College of Engineering work on an assortment projects in collaboration with OEMs and parts suppliers who consequently conduct testing at the course on a sliding fee scale.
Building facades up to two stories high line the streets of Mcity’s urban downtown area.
A highway overpass is simulated at Mcity by a tunnel that blocks vehicles from receiving wireless and satellite signals.
“More ‘traditional’ automotive proving grounds generally are much larger,” according to Carney, often dominated by an oval high-speed track. At Mcity’s realistically focused environment, building facades of up to two stories high can be efficiently repositioned and the locations of faux pedestrians, bicyclists and other obstacles can be altered for different types of tests.
The tunnel that comprises a simulated highway overpass is accompanied by a steel bridge to create special challenges by blocking vehicle reception of signals from sensors, satellites and other wireless sources.
Included in the 16 acres of roads and traffic infrastructure are 4.25 lane-miles of varied driving surfaces such as gravel and differing pavement types. A 1,000-foot stretch of highway mimics a limited-access freeway, complete with entrance and exit ramps, overhead road signs, guardrails and other features. There are street lights, crosswalks, lane delineators, curb cuts, bike lanes, trees, fire hydrants, sidewalks, signs, traffic control devices – even construction barriers.
“The goal of Mcity is that we get a scaling factor. Every mile driven there can represent 10, 100 or 1,000 miles of on-road driving in terms of our ability to pack in the occurrences of difficult events,” explains Dr. Ryan Eustice, a U-M associate professor who additionally serves as director of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) and director of the Perceptual Robotics Laboratory (PeRL) along with contributing to collaborative programs with Ford.
A grand experiment
At present some 60 industry entities have been involved with more than 20 research projects amounting to $26.5 million in investments, logging 4,400 hours-plus of on-the-road testing since January 2017. Development and deployment activities are expected to top $100 million by 2020, with funding from U-M, government agencies and auto industry patrons.
“Launching Mcity was in itself a grand experiment,” says Peng, the facility’s director. “How might companies representing such a broad range of industries, including many who compete with each other, be able to effectively work together? The experiment has proven to be a very successful model where these companies have been able to work collaboratively and productively to explore questions about connected and automated vehicles that no single company or industry can address alone.”
Beginning a second funding phase in 2017, 11 firms belonging to the Mcity Leadership Circle have committed to invest a total of $11 million over a three-year period for further upgrades.
The Leadership Circle’s roster includes Delphi, DENSO, LG Electronics, Verizon, State Farm Insurance, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Toyota and State Farm Insurance.
“Our leadership position with Mcity gives us early access to the latest data and research findings as the connected and automated ecosystem evolves, so that we can better understand the potential benefits and risks of connected and automated vehicles,” explains Chris Mullen, State Farm’s director of technology research. “We are also able to encourage research direction that will be most useful to our customers and our business.”
“The breadth and depth of membership in the Leadership Circle speaks volumes about Mcity’s important work,” notes LG Senior Vice President of Technology Dr. Jong G. Kim. “From LG’s perspective, Mcity represents the epicenter of innovation and public policy defining the future of connected transportation.”
“Mcity is a great opportunity to combine engineering, urban planning and energy and information technologies to accelerate progress and help drive the industry forward with automated vehicles,” reports Doug Patton, DENSO’s executive vice president of engineering, providing “the ability to collect data on our dedicated short-range communication modules, data communication modules, driver status monitoring and more to make the necessary changes before putting these technologies on the road.”
An on-campus DENSO R&D laboratory has a dozen standout U-M students researching the intricacies of machine learning, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Drive (AD). “As a member of the Mobility Transformation Center’s Leadership Circle and a sponsor of multiple research projects across campus, DENSO has been one of the University’s key industrial partners,” says U-M Vice President for Research Dr. S. Jack Hu.
Hu, who also holds numerous professorship positions, points out that the DENSO lab’s ongoing academic contributions “allow us work even more closely to create further opportunities for innovation and education.”
Rebuilding public trust
In January Mcity rolled out a new “ABC Test” concept to deliver independent safety assessments for highly automated vehicles (HAVs), covering “Accelerated Evaluation, Behavior Competence and Corner Cases” related to performance issues. Recent polls have found that more than half of American respondents are concerned about the safety of autonomous technologies.
“Highly automated vehicles must be developed in a responsible way to fully realize their promise as a useful tool that will benefit society,” according to Peng, describing a three-pronged approach to HAV testing that includes simulated driving and HAV on-road evaluation in the aftermath of two pedestrian and motorist deaths elsewhere attributed to driverless car technological failures.
“The Mcity ABC Test is an approach that can help rebuild public trust and accelerate the development of these potentially life-changing vehicles,” Peng points out.
Drawing from a variety of sources, Mcity has compiled a list of 50 dicey situations, of which 35 were chosen for a near-term study focus, including 16 scenarios for low-speed, path-following vehicles. Corner-case testing concentrates on situations that test the limits of automated vehicle performance and technology, as with 16 behavior competence scenarios for lower-speed applications pertaining to experimental driverless vehicles.
A specially equipped Lincoln MKZ, based at Mcity, is an open-source connected and automated research vehicle available to U-M faculty and students, startups and others to help accelerate innovation. The Arma, a 15-passenger driverless electric shuttle manufactured by French firm NAVYA, is also part of the on-campus test fleet.
