The city of Racine, Wisconsin, has a new shuttle that doesn\u2019t necessarily need a driver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dubbed the “Badger,” the new shuttle is a flashy example of technological advances that have led to the emergence of autonomous vehicles\u2014capable of driving themselves\u2014over the past decade. It is also both the culmination of and a new starting point for years of research for the Traffic Operations and Safety (TOPS) Laboratory<\/a> at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Steven Parker, the lab’s managing director, says faculty and staff who work in the TOPS Lab have researched connected and autonomous vehicles from various perspectives for years. Those years of work have led to the Badger, which is the first application of autonomous driving at the municipal level in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Badger, which was built by Perrone Robotics in Virginia, is a smart vehicle capable of both predefined route-mapping and real-time environmental sensing to make adjustments as it drives. It\u2019s equipped with lidar sensors that researchers can use to recreate a point-by-point image of what the vehicle \u201csees\u201d while traveling the roadways, in addition to traditional cameras for more human-ready imaging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s a Level 4 autonomous vehicle, which is the second-highest ranking on SAE International\u2019s<\/a> J3016 six-level scale for vehicle automation. The scale runs from Level 0, which means a vehicle has no automated features at all, to fully autonomous vehicles at Level 5. A Level 4 vehicle like the Badger has a high degree of driving automation features, but should still have a human driver ready to take over in certain circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAny time we take it out, there will be a TOPS Lab researcher in the vehicle ready to disengage, which means they can hit a button and take full control of the vehicle,\u201d Parker says. \u201cIn these autonomous vehicles, the safe driver is still a very active role. It requires a lot of attention\u2014especially because in this case, everything we do will affect how the public perceives this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Badger\u2019s software also maintains a running log of every event that happens while it\u2019s driving, and Parker says TOPS Lab researchers will review that information to inform safety decisions for it and even future vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur first priority is to develop safe operating procedures for this vehicle,\u201d Parker says. \u201cSo the first step is to set up experiments and understand from the data this car provides what its limitations are and how it can operate safely. We want to understand, for example, how it might operate in winter conditions, with snow, rain or wind coming off Lake Michigan. We\u2019ll start testing it in small areas, but eventually want to move to more public-facing demonstrations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Autonomous vehicles are no strangers to controversies that may adversely impact the public\u2019s perception of their safety. Tesla vehicles equipped with a self-driving autopilot mode, for example, have been involved in enough high-profile crashes that they\u2019ve caught the attention of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Badger, however, will generally operate at less than 25 miles per hour and won\u2019t be traveling on highways\u2014and, says TOPS Lab Director David Noyce<\/a>, public acceptance is key to adoption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n