Ever wonder when your next family road trip vacation won’t involve driving? When everyone can kick back and play the games or read a book?
MCity hopes to make a big step.
A step towards the vision of driverless cars. It just opened up – but not for you and me.
MCity occupies 32 acres at the U of M Mobility Transformation Center. The city houses thousands of feet of road. Some is pavement, some asphalt and some even brick or dirt. It is built to test automated cars on 2, 3 and 4 lane roads, navigate buildings, hydrants, sidewalks and read signs.
Every detail accounted for.
Engineers incorporated everything they could think of when building MCity. From graffiti marked signs to faded lane markings every detail is there. This will allow scientists to quickly work out the many bugs that plague automated cars.
So how long until you can kick back?
One of the major project goals for MCity is to deploy connected networked driverless cars on Ann Arbor roads by 2021! From there, it is only a matter of time until it spreads nationwide. So get ready, you could be hitting a whole new kind of cruise control in the next decade.