MCity

This week, with the rest of the lab, I got to visit MCity (https://mcity.umich.edu/). MCity is a newly built testing ground on campus, with the main goal of facilitating the development of autonomous vehicles. As someone involved with a student team that makes an autonomous boat, I found it all to be very interesting. In the tour I got to see the test roads, with mock signs, road paintings, buildings, and more. Just seeing what they've included gives valuable insight into what kinds of challenges autonomous cars need to overcome, and what kinds of things they can detect using sensors like LIDAR, GPS, and even cameras. I sat in one car with a screen that showed the camera detecting people walking in front of it in real time. One benefit of autonomous cars is their potential to be safer than humans behind the wheel, which is something to be excited about. Let's just hope the sensors won't be taken advantage of.

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