Ottawa opens autonomous car test track

OTTAWA — Kanata, a suburb of Ottawa, is now home to the first Canadian autonomous vehicle demonstration track on public roads with integrated municipal wireless infrastructure, representing an opportunity for communication companies to test their technologies in a real world scenario. Ottawa mayor Jim Watson, senior vice-president and general manager of Blackberry Ltd. John Wall and local city councillor Marianne Wilkinson took a ride in Blackberry QNX’s prototype self-driving car Thursday. The car drove itself up and down one part of the test track and successfully stopped for a red light, allowing pedestrians to cross, in front of a large crowd of onlookers. What the crowd might not have seen was the Cohda Wireless Pty Ltd. transmission box, which relayed the status of the light to the car through the Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) wireless standard. This was one of nine different traffic signals autonomous cars need to contend with to navigate the course successfully. The track is now open to any company licensed to test self-driving cars. The event followed similar demonstrations on Parliament Hill and the U.S. border in recent months. “We're basically, from the city's perspective, sitting there saying ‘okay, so, it's our street and our infrastructure. How can we help?’” said City of Ottawa economic development officer Chris Cope in a phone interview. “We've created this position where we will try and listen to any requests and do what we can do to try and make things happen.” The communication technologies found in the car and the stop light will be “tied into the city's traffic management system which is quite complex, and kind of cool actually,” said Cope. The test road will also remain open for use by the general public. There is a second phase of the track planned which will expand it to an even larger road with much more public use. Cope said he hopes that future partnerships could grow with the expansion of the test track. Also on Thursday, Transport Canada announced in a press release $1.7 million in funding for connected-car-related projects, for “research, studies and technology evaluations; the development of codes, standards, and guidance materials; and, professional capacity building that will help Canadian jurisdictions prepare for connected and automated vehicles.” The money will be available through Transport Canada’s program to Advance Connectivity and Automation in the Transportation System. In a separate announcement, the school of information technology at Carleton University said that it will receive $974,000 in funding from the Canadian Safety and Security Program. To funding will go to professor Richard Yu for his research on cyber security of connected and autonomous vehicles, Carleton said in a press release, noting that the research project partners with Transport Canada and Blackberry. Connected cars are also currently the subject of a Senate committee study that has heard from the likes of Blackberry and privacy experts. — With reporting by Bryson Masse at bmasse@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Ottawa opens autonomous car test track

News | October 13, 2017

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Ottawa opens autonomous car test track

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