ACADEMIC/INDUSTRY EDUCATIONAL LAB FOR SIMULATION-BASED TEST & EVALUATION OF AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

An academic/industry alliance can improve the preparedness of students to enter the workforce. When the alliance is centered around a laboratory providing students real world research and development experience, both partners benefit from the intellectual engagement. This paper discusses the benefits of a collaborative laboratory being developed in support of the modeling and simulation engineering program at Old Dominion University. The laboratory focuses on simulation-based test and evaluation (T&E) of autonomous vehicles, an important economic and social problem. Economically, driverless cars and drone delivery systems are the wave of the future. Socially there are issues of public acceptance of these systems as evident by public reaction to the infrequent, but highly public, accidents involving driverless cars. The laboratory allows academia and industry to address these important problems by improving the T&E of these systems while also improving student skills, giving undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to participate in research.