The benefits of autonomous vehicles to humanity are seemingly endless. Autonomy will reduce accidents and road-related deaths, provide enhanced mobility to the aging and disabled, diminish carbon emissions, and alleviate traffic congestion, just to name a few. The development of these autonomous vehicles has been occurring at a rapid pace. Virtually all major car manufacturers, ride-share companies, and universities are heavily investing in the new technology. This investment and rapid development has lead experts to believe that completely autonomous vehicles will begin appearing on our roadways as soon as 2019. However, before you can start watching Netflix in the back of your Nissan, all self-driving vehicles must be extensively tested and comply with government regulations.

In order to adequately test and evaluate autonomous cars, specialized locations, called proving grounds must be utilized. These proving grounds provide a safe and secure testing environment and allow for researchers to exercise precise control over test parameters. In January of this year (2017), the United States Department of Transportation named 10 federal autonomous vehicle proving grounds. One of those locations is right here at Penn State’s Larson Test Track!

As someone who wants to develop and test hardware for autonomous vehicles, I was thrilled when I found out that Penn State was one of the places autonomous vehicles could be tested. Even more exhilarating was when my academic advisor informed me that Pennsylvania’s first annual automated vehicle summit was taking place at Penn State on September 12^th and that I could attend!

Of course, I accepted his offer.

I traveled to the event with Penn State’s Intelligent Vehicles and Systems Group (ISVG), a graduate research group which was presenting their projects for summit attendees. The ISVG showed off their driving simulator beta software. When completed, the simulator will be used to quantify the differences between the amount of risk drivers take in a simulated environment versus a real environment. By measuring this difference, the IVSG hopes to improve training software for commercial drivers. In addition to the driving simulator, the research group showed off a computer program that matched lidar (laser-radar) data of a road to video captured by a car-mounted camera. The program can be used to more accurately guide autonomous vehicles and ensure that they stay inside their lanes.

Additionally, both Uber and Carnegie Mellon were in attendance with autonomous vehicle prototypes in tow. I got the chance to ride in Carnegie Mellon’s autonomous Cadillac! The experience was just as if a person was driving the car, although when a bus passed us the breaks applied a little too harshly. Carnegie Mellon definitely has some more fine tuning to do with their vehicle, but the fact that it works at all is simply stunning. Riding in the car made autonomy feel real, like the future was occurring now. My experience at the summit made me realize just how fast technology is developing, and how important it is for businesses, universities, and consumers alike to support technology’s development.