Self-Driving Cars and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Testing Comes to Ohio Highway

Self-driving car and vehicle-to-infrastructure tests are coming to a 35-mile stretch of Ohio's Route 33, according to a press release from Intel-owned software company Wind River. 

Wind River is working with Ohio State University, the Transportation Research Center, and the City of Dublin, Ohio to bring future car tech testing to the Central Ohio area, the company announced Wednesday. The main focus of the tests is to monitor how cars and infrastructure can communicate better to make drivers' lives easier.

Systems such as vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, connected cockpit units, and smart mapping will be involved in the tests. The trials will also be used for collecting data for research purposes. In addition to directly furthering the engineering of self-driving cars, Ohio State and Wind River hope the tests will also engage college students.  

“The Central Ohio region is an emerging hub for smart city and smart vehicle technologies, and our unique ensemble approach—uniting minds from academia, the public sector, and the tech industry—can set a standard for how communities can innovate mobility and use the learnings to impact vehicle development and deployment best practices,” said Wind River's general manager of connected vehicles, Marques McCammon, in a press release. “To realise autonomous driving for the masses, a variety of players must come together with an aligned understanding.”  

The roadway that will hold this testing, Route 33's "Smart Corridor," is a stretch of road between Dublin and East Liberty that the Ohio Department of Transportation is lining with fiber-optic cables that engineers can use to collect data. 

It's unclear exactly when testing will start.