The first open-source digital twin of the Mcity Test Facility, the University of Michigan’s proving ground for connected and autonomous vehicles and technologies, is now available to the public. The new Mcity digital twin, developed with support from the National Science Foundation, is said to be the first open-source digital twin for mobility systems testing, including autonomous driving.
“This takes our almost 10-year-old track and puts the digital replica directly over it. That’s a living, breathing manifestation of that physical track where people can do mixed reality testing and development,” said Greg Stevens, director of research at Mcity.
It offers a variety of road materials, markings, signals and intersections, and works in conjunction with TeraSim, an open-source traffic simulator developed by Mcity researchers that replicates other road users, such as pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers, and generates safety-critical events like potential collisions. The traffic behavioral models within TeraSim are calibrated with real-world data.
“You can drive millions of miles in your AV in a digital twin built off of a real-world environment before your AV actually touches the real world,” noted Darian Hogue, an Mcity software engineer who helped develop the digital twin.
“With this, we can control all kinds of factors. That includes controlling and manipulating simulated pedestrian traffic – a factor that is random in the real world. This focuses and accelerates simulated testing.
“What differentiates the Mcity digital twin is that it supports virtual testing, while remote use involves testing a physical vehicle at our physical test track from a remote location,” said Mcity director Henry Liu, professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Bruce D Greenshields Collegiate Professor.
“As an open-source tool, the Mcity digital twin lowers barriers to use of the test facility by technology developers and researchers. The digital twin could also help developers better prepare for on-site testing at Mcity.”