Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS) and Canada’s McMaster University have partnered to launch the Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence and Smart Mobility, which aims to design the future of inclusive mobility through collaboration between government, academia, and the public and private sectors.
The long-term programme will also train both engineers and scientists through hands-on research and product development with public and private mobility service providers.
The McMaster Automotive Resource Centre (MARC), a transportation research institute in Hamilton, Canada, will be the headquarters of the new centre. Here McMaster researchers will work with CTS, a provider of transportation and traffic management solutions, to address issues facing transportation systems through multidisciplinary research and product development.
According to the collaboration, it will not only develop a future workforce – including undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, faculty and research staff – but the programme will also focus on bringing diversity to product development.
“Creating this Centre of Excellence delivers an ecosystem dedicated to improving the way people move around their towns and cities through the advancement of transportation technology and products,” said Galen Chui, SVP of engineering, CTS.
“Data analytics, computer vision, and machine learning are our technical areas of focus while our design foundation centres around accessibility and inclusion to ensure mobility works for all citizens.”
Students will participate in projects from research through to implementation in areas such as leveraging AI and machine learning techniques for integrating and controlling smart devices, infrastructure, traffic, and environmental conditions to improve and optimise mobility as a whole. Other research aims to develop scenario simulations to help build, test, and validate innovations before real-world implementation.
McMaster’s Ali Emadi, engineering professor and Canada Research chair in transportation electrification and smart mobility, added: “We want to invite all sectors to join forces with us to support research and advance the state of the industry. With the help of academia, non-profit organisations, governments, government labs, private start-ups, SMEs, and large corporations, as we come out of the pandemic we can build back better, with more sustainable and inclusive technologies that benefit our communities.”
