The Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research (WatCAR) focuses on collaborative research in automotive and transportation systems, by facilitating relations between those within the automotive industry and University of Waterloo faculty researchers.
WatCAR also participates in connecting undergraduate students with co-op work placements and graduate students with internships.
Automotive and information technology are converging in today's vehicles at a rapid, disruptive rate. With the largest engineering faculty in Canada and with a computer science school based in the largest mathematics faculty in the world, Waterloo knows this convergence all too well.
As a leading North American academic enterprise, WatCAR offers over 125 faculty with 40+ research competencies. We are a portal for assemblers, parts manufacturers, materials suppliers and regulators, and software and technology companies. See our detailed list of research expertise.
Vision
WatCAR envisions future mobility to be smarter, cleaner and more convenient; available to an increasingly wider segment of society.
Our researchers work to achieve this vision through their expertise in:
- connectivity,
- cybersecurity,
- advanced powertrains,
- artificial intelligence,
- autonomous driving,
- and structural light weighting.
News
Fully autonomous vehicles to be allowed on Ontario roads.
If you’re driving along and you pass a car beside you with no-one inside driving, you just might be in Ontario.
The provincial government has changed the rules to allow testing of fully autonomous vehicles, without someone behind the wheel. Testing of vehicles with no-one in the driver’s seat has been done on closed tracks, while some testing has been allowed on public roads but with someone in the driver’s seat just in case.
Hands off the wheel: A primer on autonomous vehicles
The common misconception when it comes to automation is that it just happens. Like the Terminator stepping from a crackling energy bubble transported from the future, it just arrives fully intact, ready to go.
Roboticists are quick to point out that reality occurs much more slowly. Automation, instead, happens one small step at a time over the course of many years.
Such is the case with cars, which are on their way to becoming self-driving. But, as per the truism of robotic reality, it’s happening more gradually than some proponents may suggest. Also, the process has been under way for decades.
Four-seasons road mapping touted as WatCAR breakthrough for AVs
‘To our knowledge, nobody in the world is doing this,’ says researcher
WATERLOO, ONT. — A research project aimed at developing three-dimensional, high-definition mapping (3D HD) could give Ontario an edge in the race to develop autonomous vehicles.
The new technology would give self-driving cars functional capabilities to handle any type of weather, and would be marketed commercially without any proprietary rights.