IUCRC Planning Grant Wayne State University: Center for Electric, Connected and Autonomous Technologies for Mobility (eCAT)

While autonomous vehicle companies focus on manufacturing driverless cars, electrification and connectivity technologies can upgrade the industry by allowing vehicles to communicate with the driving circumstance to achieve better safety with less emission. A key obstacle to the development of the electric, connected and autonomous vehicle system is the shortage of synergy research from needed domains.

The proposed Center for Electric, Connected and Autonomous Technologies for Mobility (eCAT) will concentrate on interdisciplinary research, aiming to initiate and accelerate the transformation of mobility methods from conventional vehicles to electric, connected and autonomous vehicles by creating innovative electric, connected and autonomous technologies.

In light of a partnership between Wayne State University (WSU), the University of North Texas (UNT), and Clarkson University (Clarkson), the center not only serves as an apparatus of academic researchers collaborating with industry on problems of high national and international importance but also provides industry partners the opportunities to access the most advanced synergic research produced from a diverse group of researchers. Especially, the Wayne State University (WSU) Site will collaborate with other academic sites by building on prior and ongoing transdisciplinary work in technology to support electrification, real-time computing system and safety of the connected autonomous vehicles.

The Center will not only advance the science and technologies of electric, connected and autonomous vehicles, but also accelerate both knowledge and intellectual property transfer between academia and industry through collaborative partnerships. This will allow for the rapid transformation of the state-of-the-art mobility technologies from research labs to industry.

Educational efforts will be devoted to (1) curriculum design for the BS/MS programs, (2) summer camp development for K-12 students, (3) broadening participation in computing and engineering, at WSU, UNT, and Clarkson. Research results will be disseminated through our annual conference - MetroCAD, publications, and the development of publicly-available open-source projects.

Data obtained from this project will include experimental, computational, text-based, and/or curricular data. All data products will be retained for a minimum of three years after conclusion of the award or three years after public release (publication), whichever is later. WSU, UNT, and Clarkson will have password-protected shared network drives to facilitate data sharing within the teams, with collaborators, and indeed anyone in the community with an interest in the NSF-funded data. A landing page for navigation to archived data will be created at http://ecat.center.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.