University of Michigan hosts tech tour for transportation experts attending ITS America Conference

The tech tour showcased UMTRI and Mcity, part of the University of Michigan College of Engineering, as national leaders within the transportation community 

More than 30 people attending the 2026 Intelligent Transportation Society of America Conference and Expo last month began their week on a mobility tech tour from Detroit to Ann Arbor. The tour offered a unique opportunity for participants to move beyond the exhibit hall and engage directly with active research and researchers.

After boarding a bus at the Huntington Place convention center in downtown Detroit, the group traveled to the American Center for Mobility (ACM) in Ypsilanti, Michigan, then along a stretch of highway and through the streets of Ann Arbor before arriving at the University of Michigan’s Mcity Test Facility. 

At ACM, the group saw a wide variety of testing environments, and a live connected vehicle demonstration. Next, experts from the UM Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) guided drove through the streets of Ann Arbor to provide a vulnerable road user demonstration. This included a screen that visualized the road environment, including tagged vehicles, the traffic signal phase, and additional road users, thanks to installed cameras. As the driver approached the signalized intersection to make a right turn, a pedestrian walked into the path of the bus. The UMTRI system detected the pedestrian entering the roadway and delivered an audio alert to the bus driver to make them aware of a potential collision.

They got off the bus at the Mcity Test Facility for a walking tour of U-M’s proving ground known around the world for its connected and autonomous vehicle testing capabilities; Mcity has now expanded to support advanced air mobility evaluation and testing as well, including drones and other low-altitude aircraft.

UMTRI and Mcity co-hosted the tech tour with ACM. In addition, UMTRI and Mcity experts participated in several education sessions at the ITS America Conference, and joined the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) booth in the exhibit hall. The theme of the conference was  “Empowering Innovation.” 

The tech tour was a conference highlight.

Andrew Donaldson, lead research engineer at UMTRI, took the microphone inside the bus to introduce the Ann Arbor Connected Environment (AACE), a city-scale deployment of connected vehicle technology that has served as a national reference for real-world V2X research for over a decade. Tracing its origins to 2012, when Ann Arbor’s streets became the world’s largest testbed for connected vehicles, the environment has evolved through several phases and is now known as AACE 2.0.

“The ITS America Conference & Expo provided a unique opportunity to demonstrate how our research has moved beyond the laboratory into the real world. Having the chance to connect with industry, government, and academics from across the country allows us to validate our work, exchange ideas, and identify new opportunities to accelerate the deployment of safer and smarter transportation technologies.” – Andrew Donaldson, Lead Research Engineer, UMTRI

Thanks to funding received from the U.S. Department of Transportation, UMTRI has retrofitted the existing environment from dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) to cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X). Capabilities include near-miss detection, leveraging existing vision systems across the city to identify safety-critical events, such as a pedestrian moving into a bus driver’s blind spot.

Jim Lollar, Mcity test facilities manager, led a tour of the Mcity Test Facility and provided background on Mcity’s latest initiative, known as M-air. M-air is an extension of the Mcity public-private partnership that was established a decade ago, and is focused on advanced air mobility and the low-altitude airspace linking the Mcity Test Facility to the innovation district at Michigan Central in Detroit. Lollar highlighted partnerships with aerospace companies and education efforts to increase the efficiency and safety of drone use by first responders.

UMTRI experts participated in the following education sessions at the ITS America Conference:

• Unlocking the Future: Vehicle-to-Network (V2N) Readiness and Benefits with Andrew Donaldson, lead research engineer, UMTRI (more on the Michigan Engineering website)
• AI and AVs: Real Use Cases, Real Impact with Mcity Managing Director Greg McGuire (more on the Mcity website)
• How AI-Driven Sensing, Automation, and Insight Transform Transportation Operations with UMTRI Director Henry Liu, who is also director of Mcity
• Lifting the Curse of Rarity: Smarter Testing for Safer AVs with Henry Liu and Darian Hogue, software engineer, Mcity (more on the Mcity website)
• Protecting Vulnerable Road Users with AI & V2X Sensors with Henry Liu (more on the Michigan Engineering website)
• Innovations and Technologies for Advancing Transportation Systems with Zachary Jerome, postdoctoral research fellow, UMTRI (more on the Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT) website)
• Interoperable Readiness: Assessing V2X Products and ITS Infrastructure for Deployability with Debby Bezzina, managing director of CCAT (more on the Michigan Engineering website)

The University of Michigan has positioned Ann Arbor as a living laboratory for next-generation transportation, offering ITS professionals a rare opportunity to experience how integrated, data-driven mobility solutions are shaping a safer, smarter, and more efficient mobility ecosystem. For ITS America Conference attendees, the visit underscored how UMTRI and Mcity continue to lead the way in multidisciplinary research that advances transportation mobility for all road users.

This story was written by Calvin Tuttle of the Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT) with edits from Susan Carney of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI).