UGA Researchers to Study Self-Driving Cars with New Grant

​Having received a $733,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, the University of Georgia College of Engineering will be able to develop systems that help self-driving cars navigate roads safely, according to a Nov. 19 news release.

As reported in The Red & Black, the team will research ways for self-driving cars to communicate amongst themselves and create algorithms for the cars to work in “ environments full of uncertainty,” according to the release. Researchers will work on artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to try to make the system learn from data and identify patterns.

Javad Mohammadpour Velni, an associate professor at UGA’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is the project’s main investigator.

“Somehow, the autonomous vehicles will need to understand the potential impact of humans, who might not make the most logical decisions while driving,” Velni said in the release. “Our goal is to capture the uncertainties of the environment and how they impact decisions autonomous vehicles must make.”

Velni and the other UGA researchers will collaborate with scientists at the University of Central Florida. Both teams will build small models of self-driving cars that are the size of a lawnmower and then test their systems on regular-size vehicles.

“Our goal is to capture the uncertainties of the environment and how they impact decisions autonomous vehicles must make,” said Velni. “You have to account for every possible scenario.”

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