The University of Arizona (UA) is partnering with state and local government agencies to form Smart Vehicles and Intelligent Transportation (SVIT), a P3 devised in effort to help Southern Arizona become an industry leader in smart-vehicle and intelligent transportation technologies.
Partners in SVIT are the Arizona Commerce Authority, the Arizona Department of Transportation, the city of Tucson, Pima Association of Governments, Pima Community College, Pima County, Musselman Honda Circuit, Tech Parks Arizona, the UA Office of Federal Relations and the UA Transportation Research Institute.
Besides the relatively new Transportation Research Institute, the UA is involved in self-driving vehicle and intelligent transportation research through the College of Engineering’s Advanced Traffic and Logistics Algorithms and Systems, for traffic-control design, and its Cognitive and Autonomous Test program, which allows students from around the nation to test their autonomous-vehicle designs at the university.
The Phoenix area was attracted self-driving car test programs from both Uber and Waymo, though Uber pulled the plug on its Arizona program after one of its cars struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe in March. Gov. Ducey signed legislation in May that allows small automated delivery vehicles to drive on sidewalks.
SVIT will host the Smart Vehicles, Intelligent Freight and Transportation Summit on Jan. 23 at the UA Tech Park Event Center, 9030 S. Rita Road. The daylong event will include a regional update on smart-vehicle tech, technology demonstrations and a networking mixer.
