Planning: AI-Ready SmartSenseAI Lab: Holistic Evaluation of ML Research for AV-enabled Transportation Services

This project aims to advance artificial intelligence (AI)-driven complex system-of-systems research by designing an AI-ready testbed for scaled deployment of autonomous vehicles, building on the foundational work of Mcity 2.0. While current automotive testbeds primarily support individual vehicle testing and safety validation, the vision of this project expands to an ecosystem approach that enables real-world exploration of multi-vehicle interactions. This includes vehicle and vulnerable road user interactions, as well as interactions with the supporting infrastructure that is essential for autonomous mobility at scale. In addition, the Mcity testbed will explore other factors needed for the safe deployment of autonomous vehicles at scale including operational support systems, such as robotic charging, cleaning, and inspection processes that are critical to robotaxi deployment and fleet resilience. This planning grant prepares the work for the proposed testbed which will serve as a national resource for pioneering research on the operational dynamics of autonomous vehicle networks, encompassing fleet-level coordination, multi-modal traffic management, and seamless infrastructure connectivity. By enabling a holistic examination of autonomous vehicle deployment, the testbed will allow researchers to study the challenges of scaling from single-vehicle testing to comprehensive fleet management, ensuring safety, efficiency, and robustness in complex, real-world scenarios. This expanded test environment will bridge critical gaps in the field, supporting innovations that are key to realizing autonomous vehicle systems as a reliable, integrated part of urban transportation infrastructure. This planning grant enables the team to prepare for the full proposal by obtaining feedback from the community and identifying the concrete requirements to upgrade and improve the existing Mcity 2.0 testbed to realize the goals described above. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.