Researchers at TRAVL have been using CARLA, an open-source driving simulator consisting of a scalable client-server architecture. The simulator allows researchers to construct custom maps, and UB researchers have developed a digital twin of the Service Center Road segment of UB’s North Campus near the university’s Center for tomorrow and the Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Enclosure facility. The TRAVL team is currently utilizing CARLA for a parking lot safety scenario involving four simulation actors, two driving simulators — a walking pedestrian and a bicyclist — and three successive traffic encroachments. They are testing scenarios where a driver encounters a pedestrian at a crosswalk, a driver passes an oncoming vehicle in a parking lot and a driver travelling alongside a bicyclist on the roadway.

One of the long-term goals for this research is to incorporate a physical autonomous vehicle into the UB Service Center Road scenario using mixed reality where some mobility actors in the real world interact with other mobility actors in the virtual world, represented by the digital twin.