By Kyle Shelton, CTS Director
Over the past year, the University of Minnesota (UMN) and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T) have participated in a fruitful exchange of ideas and built the foundations of future research collaborations. Visits have been supported by a research partnership program established by the UMN’s Research and Innovation Office and the Division of Research and Economic Development at NC A&T.
In April, I traveled with CTS scholars Michael Levin, Alireza Khani, Raphael Stern, and Seongjin Choi from the UMN’s Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering (CEGE) to NC A&T in Greensboro. There, we met with faculty in the College of Engineering in efforts to connect the transportation research occurring at both systems.
NC A&T faculty are national leaders in autonomous transportation technology; they lead one University Transportation Center, the Center for Regional and Rural Connected Communities (C2RC), and participate as members in two others: the Center for Automated Vehicles Research with Multimodal Assured Navigation (CARMEN+) and the Center for Freight Transportation for Efficient and Resilient Supply Chain (FERSC).
The visit was organized by Ali Karimoddini and Venktesh Pandey. Karimoddini leads the C2RC, the Autonomous Cooperative Control of Emergent Systems of Systems Lab, and the NC Transportation Center of Excellence on Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Technology. Pandey, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, explores the integration of intelligent transportation systems and emerging mobility services into traffic operations and transportation planning models with an emphasis on sustainability.
During our time in Greensboro, we visited the rural autonomous test track at NC A&T’s North Gateway campus, toured its vehicle simulator and robotics lab, and talked with Rachel Liu, director of the Transportation Institute within NC A&T’s college of business. The visit also featured a poster session showcasing the impressive work underway by both graduate and undergraduate students at NC A&T.
The second leg of the exchange occurred in mid-September as the UMN’s CEGE hosted a delegation from NC A&T. Faculty members Karimioddini, Pandey, and Liu toured multiple College of Science and Engineering facilities and engaged with UMN teams led by CTS scholars Zhi-Li Zhang and Rajesh Rajamani, whose research uses our MnCAV Ecosystem autonomous vehicle to explore connectivity and remote driving. The NC A&T team also attended a poster session with UMN students and met with CTS Deputy Director Gina Baas and Accessibility Observatory Director Eric Lind.
