Mcity engineer who fell in love with video games as a child now programs winning solutions in the real world of AV testing
Mcity is a one-of-a-kind, world-class mixed-reality proving ground and data collection center combining a 2.5-mile test track, virtual reality and remote access that challenges test vehicles to overcome an ever-changing combination of obstacles and threats to find the best technology for the autonomous and connected vehicles of the future.
From Derek Johnson’s perspective, that makes Mcity a lot like the world’s biggest video game.
Johnson, 46, is Mcity’s principal engineer, and a veteran software engineer who started programming thanks to the video games he played in grade school.
“I taught myself how to code when I was 12 years old, and it was all because I was playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, which had lots of dice rolling,” Johnson said. “I wanted to scale it up and discovered there’s this thing called programming, so I’ve got to try this. Once I did, I was hooked. I loved it and I wrote my first game in high school.”
These days, however, Johnson finds that programming video games isn’t nearly as interesting as programming the changes coming to Mcity 2.0.
“I don’t play games as much anymore, and I think that’s because Mcity satisfies that desire,” Johnson said. “We’re literally making Mcity the game right now.”
Good fit for jack-of-all-trades
Johnson joined Mcity in August 2022 after 13 years as a lead engineer and quality assurance team manager at Ann Arbor’s AdvantageCS, an enterprise, resource and planning platform for publishers. After mastering the software development cycle he was anxious to get back to working with hardware, as well as the broader spectrum of challenges that come with expanding Mcity’s vehicle testing infrastructure.
“Mcity is a really good fit for me because I’ve always been a jack of all trades,” Johnson said. “I joke with my kids that their dad’s doing all right. I get invited to all the meetings and fortunately I’m never the smartest person in the room.”
Johnson has two sons, Colin, 20, studying computer science at the University of Michigan, and Josh, 18, studying at Washtenaw Community College. Born in Ann Arbor, Johnson grew up in nearby Dexter. He’s married to his high school sweetheart, Eva, a technical writer. (“I consider myself a good writer, but she puts me to shame,” he said.) They both attended Michigan Technological University, where Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. (“I loved it up there. If I could have gotten the one engineering job that was in the community, I would’ve taken it.”)
Johnson’s jack-of-all-trades skill set rapidly expanded when he arrived at Mcity as he came to understand the larger role Mcity plays in developing the autonomous vehicle industry.
“There’s nobody here that doesn’t understand the broad spectrum of what Mcity tackles,” he said. “We’re too small and lean to not have everybody on board when it comes to business development, getting new members and taking care of whomever is using the facility today.”
No challenge too great
Mcity’s wide array of technology for testing AVs – as well as creating the tests themselves – represents another challenge.
“For Mcity 2.0, we’ve been building the capability of the facility over the past couple of years, and pushing it in different directions. Virtual reality is one of them, and remote accessibility to the site is front and center. A lot of what we’re doing is bringing in research teams from across the country to work remotely where we might be playing the role of the vehicle and providing that mixed reality of the test track combined with VR.”
But virtual reality isn’t always virtuous, as Johnson discovered during a recent run-through of an upcoming demonstration that deployed VR technology to drive a real Mcity test-track vehicle from a remote simulator.
“I’m driving everything, I throw the VR headset on, and I’m seeing things that don’t gel with what my brain thinks I should be seeing,” Johnson said. “We got it working in about 15 minutes but I was sick. I could not shake the VR sickness for the rest of the evening, and the other engineers had a hard time not laughing at me. VR is really promising, but that’s something we need to solve.”
Another important skill set Johnson brings to Mcity is his experience as a manager who can be hands-on but who also knows when to step back. Younger programmers also benefit from his many years of experience, such as knowing first-hand that working 36 hours straight is a great way to blow up a demonstration machine one hour before that demonstration starts.
“Taking care of your people is probably the biggest thing that I think new managers have to learn,” Johnson said. “One thing that’s difficult is getting people to take their vacations, because we have so many projects in the pipeline and the engineers care so much about the work. You’ve got to point out that we all have significant others, we have children, we have families and that’s the really important stuff. You’re supposed to be doing work, but let’s not lose sight of what’s really important here. You’ve got to take some time off. You’ve got to go on the bike rides.”
But at other times there are things like the alert that recently popped up on Johnson’s smartphone.
“I just got a message,” Johnson said. “One of our test track cameras got struck by lightning.”
Which, you have to admit, sounds like something straight out of a video game.
This story was written by Metro Detroit-based freelance writer Brian J. O’Connor.