The Transportation Research Center is partnering with the city of Dublin, Ohio.
It is also expected to contribute to the development of specialized personnel in the automotive industry.

Wind River announced a collaboration with Ohio State University, the city of Dublin, Ohio, and the Transportation Research Center (TRC), the largest automotive research institute in the United States, to develop smart, connected vehicles and autonomous driving technologies.

“Ohio is an emerging hub for smart city and smart vehicle technology, and this new collaborative model between academia, the public sector, and the technology industry will set a new standard for mobility innovation and establish best practices for vehicle development and deployment,” said Marques McCammon, General Manager of Connected Vehicles at Wind River. “The widespread adoption of autonomous driving technology requires multifaceted collaboration and shared consensus, and this research builds on that premise.”

In addition, “as software becomes the core of the automotive industry and automobiles play an important role in our society, research on autonomous driving must be supported by comprehensive cooperation. “In particular, Dublin is one of the regions in the United States where smart connected technologies are widely applied, and we expect that this collaboration will bear meaningful fruit,” he said.

Going forward, the four institutions plan to test technologies related to autonomous driving, including vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication technologies, software for cockpits—integrated display systems that provide drivers with essential information in connected cars—smart sensors and mapping, and related data collection. This project will also contribute to the development of the next generation of automotive professionals, with Ohio State students, researchers, and faculty playing a key role.

A key goal of the project's initial phase is to implement autonomous vehicles as a "rolling laboratory" for collaborative development and testing. Wind River, with its expertise in the aerospace, defense, industrial, and automotive markets, will lead the project, spearheading software development for safety-critical systems.

TRC is the largest independent research institute in the United States dedicated to vehicle and terrain testing. As a core unit of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Vehicle Research and Test Center, it plays a central role in one-stop research and development for the automotive industry. TRC, with its expertise in areas such as vehicle crash, emissions and durability testing, will lead the vehicle validation process for this project and provide a rigorous testing hub on 4,500 acres of road and approximately 7.5 miles of high-speed course.