The Autonomous and Connected Mobility (ACM) Lab is equipped with several 1/10th scale vehicles (Quanser QCars), a powerful computer workstation, a wireless communication network (router), and configurable indoor tracks - with straight line roads, curves, roundabouts, intersections, smart traffic signals, and various small scale road signs (such as stop signs, yield signs, and speed limits). The QCars are loaded with powerful NVIDIA GPU computing hardware and several sensors: 4 CSI cameras for full 360 degree vision, Intel RealSense RGBD camera, 2D lidar, IMU, encoder. The QCars also have WiFi for wireless communication capability. The QCars are controlled by a drive DC motor and a servo motor for steering.
The equipment and software packages in the ACM Lab enable education and research in the following areas: advanced sensing for perception, obstacle detection/avoidance, object recognition, mapping, localization, and control for intelligent mobile robotics, advanced driver assist systems (ADAS), autonomous driving, and vehicular communications (V2X).
The system supports software development in Matlab/Simulink, Python, and ROS. Quanser also offers the digital twin of the QCar in a simulation environment, which supports configurable and visually rich environments that can be used to create scenarios that mimic the real-world.
Example projects that have been developed in the lab include: Deep Learning enabled perception system for traffic signal and road sign recognition with automated controls. This project was further extended to incorporate vehicular communication with smart traffic lights, using vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication, which helps improve the reliability of autonomous vehicles against failures of the perception system due to poor visibility or communication issues.
Contact
Girma Tewolde, Ph.D.
Professor of Computer Engineering
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
ACM Lab Director
MSE Mobility Systems Program Co-Director
MSE CE & EE Programs Advisor
Phone: 810-762-7934
Email: gtewolde@kettering.edu