Mcity, UMTRI celebrate milestones and look ahead to the future of transportation research
In October, Mcity and the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) marked a pair of milestones: the 60th anniversary of UMTRI’s founding, and the 10th anniversary of the Mcity Test Facility, now part of UMTRI.
A special two-day event held October 2-3 brought together experts from industry, academia and government to explore the impact of research advances and new technologies on transportation, and to look ahead to where research may lead us next.
The event began with a day-long UMTRI Symposium, followed by a day of technology demonstrations. Click the links below to watch some or all of the Symposium panels and tech demos.
UMTRI Symposium
Find the full playlist of Symposium videos at this YouTube link:
Here are YouTube links for each session of the Symposium:
- Welcoming Remarks
- UMTRI Director Henry Liu. Liu is also the director of Mcity, and the Bruce D. Greenshields Collegiate Professor of Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering, from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
- U-M College of Engineering Dean Karen Thole. Thole, the Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering, joined U-M from Pennsylvania State University in 2024 and holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas, Austin.
- U-M President Domenico Grasso. Grasso holds a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the U-M College of Engineering, the campus home of UMTRI.
- Panel Discussion: Propelling University-Industry Collaborations
- A panel discussion about the importance of industry-academic partnerships in research to foster innovation, especially amid today’s funding challenges. The panel was moderated by U-M College of Engineering Dean Karen Thole and brought together current leaders from the organizations that founded UMTRI in 1965: Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., and the auto industry group now known as the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.
- Panel Discussion: AVs—How Safe is Safe Enough?
- A group of internal and external experts led by Mcity Research Director Greg Stevens considered the question: How safe is safe enough when it comes to AVs? Panelists represented organizations with a stake in ensuring consumer confidence in AV safety.
- Panel Discussion: AI for Transportation
- Another panel tackled the impact of artificial intelligence on the transportation industry, affecting everything from autonomous vehicles to intelligent traffic management systems and more while transforming how people and goods move around the world.
- Panel Discussion: UMTRI Impact—Perspectives on the Future
- A group of UMTRI faculty talked about what’s next in their individual areas of expertise, including the growing role of simulation and modeling, along with AI, in transportation research.
- Fireside Chat: What Will the Future Bring?
- Leaders of top transportation research institutes across the country talked about the future of research and innovation in transportation and mobility. The panel was moderated by Robert Hampshire, executive director of the Research Development Office at the University of Minnesota, and former chief science officer for the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Demo Day
Attendees also had an exclusive opportunity to learn more about Mcity and UMTRI’s broad testing and research capabilities. Click here for full descriptions of all the demos.
UMTRI Demos
- Future AI-Driven Digital Twin for Crash Injury Assessment
- Occupant Monitoring
- 6-Wheel Vehicle Simulator
- Ground Trip Truth Recorder (GTTR)
- PassFit™
- Road Roughness Index/Profiler
- Ann Arbor Connected Vehicle Environment Demonstration
- Congestion reduction through transit signal priority (TSP), conducted at the Mcity Test Facility
- Vulnerable road user protection
- Visualization of Basic Safety Message (BSM), Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT), and sensor data sharing messages (SDSMs)
- Heat Map Testing
- Near-miss Detection
- AACE Visualization Tools
Mcity Demos
Mcity highlighted four use cases for remote testing capabilities at the Mcity Test Facility, made possible using digital infrastructure, developed using funding from the National Science Foundation, that works with the physical test rack to enable remote testing.
Watch any or all of the Mcity demonstrations at the YouTube link below:
The specific demonstrations included:
- Seconds to Impact: Human Decisions in Mixed Reality. A team of students from the U-M School of Information, working with mentors from U-M and the automaker Stellantis, explored one of the most critical challenges in autonomous driving: how to safely and quickly hand control back to a human driver. The demonstration replicates a high-stakes safety scenario and combines simulation with teleoperation of a real vehicle at the Mcity Test Facility.
- Live From Buffalo to Ann Arbor: The Future of Mixed Reality. A team from the University at Buffalo showcased Mcity’s cutting-edge capability: synchronizing remote simulators with real-world autonomous vehicles in a shared, mixed-reality environment.
- Lifting the Curse of Rarity: Smarter Testing for Safer AVs. One of the biggest challenges in AV testing is the “Curse of Rarity,” those dangerous edge cases that are so infrequent in the real world you’d have to drive millions of miles just to encounter one. Gathering data on these rare events is difficult and incredibly expensive. This demonstration includea video scenarios that never actually happened, but absolutely could. And that’s the point: safer AVs, faster, through smart simulation and synthetic data generation.
- Green Lights Ahead: Cooperative Autonomy in Action. A research team from the University of Washington conducted a live demonstration of cooperative control between connected autonomous vehicles and smart traffic signals. Rather than traffic lights blindly cycling on timers, the signals respond intelligently to actual conditions, offering a glimpse into a future where traffic always flows smoothly.