Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) speaks with Professor Michal Antkiewicz about the University of Waterloo's autonomous driving vehicle, the Autonomoose. This vehicle is Canada's first complete autonomous driving system.
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.
Real-world experience working on a Waterloo vehicle team helped an undergraduate student land a plum co-op job at Tesla.
Members of the company’s hiring committee were so impressed with Devon Copeland’s work with Waterloo’s Midnight Sun Solar Car that they asked him to make a presentation about his involvement with the team.
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.
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.
Researchers at the University of Waterloo reached an important milestone this summer by logging their 100th kilometre on public roads in a self-driving car.
Recorded in an industrial area of Waterloo, it was the culmination of almost two years of work since the research team won approval from the Ontario government to do on-road testing in an autonomous vehicle pilot program.
Ontario is becoming a hub of self-driving car development and that’s potentially good news for anyone who’s been stuck in gridlock, or frustrated by the forlorn search for a parking spot downtown in winter. Autonomous and semi-autonomous cars developed in our backyard mean cars that are going to work in our climate – not to mention getting a slice of this trillion-dollar industry.
“We have many of the pieces needed to become a leading player in autonomous vehicle technology, and ultimately – speaking kind of selfishly – for our area to really benefit from it in terms of a better quality of life,” said Oshoma Momoh, chief technical advisor at Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District.
WATERLOO — Two of the most important sectors of the Ontario economy — automotive and high tech — have converged in southern Ontario to form an economic cluster that is unique in North America.
The convergence has been driven mainly by the availability of software developers and other tech talent, Ross McKenzie, managing director of the Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research said Wednesday in an interview during the University of Waterloo's Autotech Symposium.
New research at the University of Waterloo could lead to the development of batteries that triple the range of electric vehicles.
The breakthrough involves the use of negative electrodes made of lithium metal, a material with the potential to dramatically increase battery storage capacity.
“This will mean cheap, safe, long-lasting batteries that give people much more range in their electric vehicles,” said Quanquan Pang, who led the research while he was a PhD candidate in chemistry at Waterloo.
From Waterloo Engineering News.
A state-of-the-art automotive research and testing facility that was five years in the making officially opened at the University of Waterloo today with a twist on the old ship-christening tradition.