John Lee
John Lee, the Emerson Electric Quality and Productivity Professor of industrial and systems engineering, and Bilge Mutlu, an associate professor of computer science, psychology and industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have received one of 11 research grants from vehicle manufacturer Toyota’s Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC) to study the opportunities and address the challenges of emerging autonomous and connected vehicle technologies.
The 11 projects, which will be conducted at eight leading research institutions in North America, are the first to be launched under CSRC Next, the Center’s new five-year program that continues to support a safer transition to the future of mobility. The program plans to invest $35 million in safety research for advanced vehicle technologies, focusing on how they impact the interactions between humans and machines. Since its launch in 2011, CSRC has completed 44 research projects with 23 partner universities.
Bilge Mutlu
Lee and Mutlu’s one-year project received $450,000 and is called “Theory of communication between drivers: Enhancing social interaction.” It is part of a research track that will develop algorithms and safety-enhancing tools by applying big-data analytic techniques to naturally occurring driving data.
Drawing upon the resources of UW-Madison’s Cognitive Systems Laboratory and Driving Simulation Laboratory, the project will provide a theoretical and mathematical framework for analyzing the communication between drivers at an intersection. Its ultimate goal is to guide the design of algorithms and indicators on autonomous vehicles to make their interactions with cars and pedestrians safer and politer.