WATERLOO — The University of Waterloo, automotive manufacturer Magna International and the federal government are funding a new five-year research project to ensure the safety and security of vehicles as they become more and more autonomous.
It will likely be years before fully self-driving cars are zipping around on our roads, but safety and security are crucial as automation increases in vehicles, said project lead Sebastian Fischmeister at an announcement Monday at the university’s Autonomous Vehicle Research and Intelligence Lab.
“When people use a safety-critical system like a car, they have the expectation that the system doesn’t harm them. In the same sense, when you step in a car, an automated car, you want to sleep in the back of the car with peace of mind,” Fischmeister said.
The research could cover security — ensuring automated systems are safe from cyber attacks — as well as ensuring safety as automation increases for driving functions like emergency braking, adaptive cruise control and steering controls.
“As we advance further and get to higher levels of autonomy, the expectation is that vehicles do more of the driving function on behalf of the driver, and those functions need to be ensured to be safe,” said Jim Quesenberry, director of research and development at Magna.
Magna and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) are each contributing $600,000 to the project, while the university will provide $400,000. Magna is also providing a test vehicle — a gleaming new, black Jeep Cherokee.
The project will fund about a dozen researchers and a new faculty member, Yash Pant, who specializes in control systems and decision-making in autonomous systems.
Research is key, as the technology evolves in ways we can’t even imagine, Fischmeister said. “We don’t yet even fully know what all the challenges will be.”
Mobile phones are used today in ways no-one would have imagined back when they were first being developed, Fischmeister noted. “The same thing will happen with autonomous vehicles. As we develop the technology, we will see new challenges and we will see new opportunities as well, where to use the technology.
“But one thing is clear: the vehicles should be safe and secure, no matter what they do and no matter how we use them.”
