Mcity, opened by the University of Michigan, U-M, is the world’s first controlled environment City designed to test the potential of connected and automated vehicle technologies which would create market for driverless cars in the future .
Mcity has got the set up of an entire city suburb with roads, sidewalks, street lights, traffic signals, Fake building frontage and outdoor dining areas. The main objective behind the Mcity concept is to test the driverless cars in human free environment before they are set free in the real world.
Peter Sweatman, director of the Mobility Transformation Centre, MTC stated that, Mcity is a safe, controlled and realistic environment where potential of the automated vehicles can be realised quickly, efficiently.
Researchers also wanted to test so-called connected vehicles within Mcity limits in addition to the evaluation of driverless cars. Vehicle to vehicle control or V2V where connected cars communicate with one another, or communication with equipments like traffic lights, vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) is possible. U-M’s interdisciplinary MTC in association with Michigan Department of Transportation MDOT, had designed and developed this Mcity. About $ 10 million had been invested already in the test facility and Mcity construction started last year.
Apart from U-M, Google I/O is also trying to test its self driven cars by subjecting them to bizarre tests. Tests like throwing beach balls, getting fake birds to swoop down towards car were done. Google I/O was founded in the year 2008, with its headquarters in San Francisco, USA .
MTC with the help of MDOT, is building on 3000 vehicle connected technology project that was started by U-M transportation three years back, to create major deployment of 9000 connected vehicles. Mcity has many car makers lining up to perform research on its roads. When the ” Mechatronic pedestraians” come in contact with these driverless cars, then the sensors and brakes efficiency of the moving driverless car would be put to test to act in time in avoiding accidents.
By the year 2021, U-M had planned to implement a connected and automated mobility system on the streets of Michigan. For the cars to be driverless, levels of automation must be highly efficient. When fully automated car would be available in the market cannot be predicted with many companies overcoming many difficulties. As the costs involved are so high, automobile giants like Toyota, GM have great advantage over other smaller ones.
