CAR West Facilities

Ohio State University’s CAR West facility houses the Automated Driving Lab and the Crash Imminent Safety University Transportation Center. It is located just a mile down the road from CAR’s main facility at 930 Kinnear Rd and offers full research solutions for the automotive industry starting with model in the loop and hardware in the loop simulation and ending with road testing at the Transportation Research Center proving grounds and public road deployment in Smart Columbus of ADAS, connected and autonomous vehicle technologies. 

Grad Room

• CAR West supports 15-20 graduate students under four professors. 
• Most students have a background in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering.
• Many are PhD and Masters students while some are undergraduates pursing a bachelor’s degree. 
• Student research topics range from vehicle to everything communication, pedestrian safety, cooperative collision avoidance and cooperative driving, highway auto pilots, low speed autonomous shuttles and fuel efficient connected and autonomous driving.

Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulator

• Used for developing automated driving algorithms and allows users to run highly realistic hardware-in-the-loop simulation of connected and autonomous driving functions.
• The simulator consists of a dSPACE Scalexio system which runs Carsim Real Time with Traffic and Sensors and is connected to a dSPACE Microautobox electronic control unit and two Dedicated Short Range Communication radios for Vehicle to everything communication.
• Vehicle in the loop and pedestrian in the loop studies can also be conducted using this simulator.
• It is also used for testing algorithms such as Lane Keeping, vehicle to everything, pedestrian collision avoidance, and decision making systems for autonomous driving.

DASH Lab

• Houses a small, low speed full electric two seater shuttle used for ride sharing applications and for testing potential solutions for the “first mile last mile” mobility problem. 
• The low speed autonomous shuttle has Drive-by-wire functionality and sensors for forward looking radar, three dimensional LIDAR, forward looking camera, GPS and a solid state LIDAR sensor used to achieve localization and environmental perception for situational awareness. 
• This vehicle is used for testing various collision avoidance algorithms for path planning in crowded environments, such as malls, and as a low speed autonomous shuttle demonstrator. 

Simulation Room

• Houses a Real Time Technologies Inc. benchtop simulator with 3 displays used for creating and troubleshooting driving scenarios.
• Vehicle dynamics can be altered in the software to allow measurement of driver preference for vehicle handling characteristics such as breaking and steering.
• This simulator is used for Driver behavior analysis, Driver-Vehicle interactions research, Driver response to ADAS and Distraction response. 

To learn more about CAR West take a video tour.