UTC to play key role in $25 million CARTA autonomous vehicle project

Live-Learning Lab rendering provided by CARTA

A $25 million federal grant awarded to Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA) will help bring a new generation of transportation technology to downtown Chattanooga.

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga will play a central role in research, education and workforce development.

CARTA announced at a press conference that it received the funding through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant program. The award will support the replacement of its downtown electric shuttles with autonomous vehicles, along with the infrastructure needed to operate them.

The project will also create an autonomous vehicle command center and the Live-Learning Lab at CARTA’s Shuttle Park South, where UTC students and faculty will be able to study the technology as it operates on Chattanooga streets.

The project will add to years of research by UTC’s Center for Urban Informatics and Progress (CUIP).

“This project gives us an opportunity to really build on that foundation and have our faculty and students conduct research, develop new intellectual property, move that IP toward commercialization,” Chancellor Lori Bruce said at the press conference.

Bruce shared that the lab will allow students and faculty to “conduct their research, do R&D, take courses, and have real-time hands-on activities.”

Dr. Mina Sartipi, UTC interim vice chancellor for research and founding director of CUIP, said the project will help researchers take their work into an operating autonomous transit system.

“Rather than studying individual technologies in isolation, we will be able to work alongside an operational autonomous transit system and explore how vehicles, roadway infrastructure, traffic signals, communications systems and transportation operations can work together as one connected ecosystem,” Sartipi said.

A major part of that work will focus on connectivity. Autonomous vehicles use cameras and sensors to understand their surroundings, while connected infrastructure can provide additional information from traffic signals, intersections and other vehicles.

The Live-Learning Lab will bring that research into the classroom. Located next to CARTA’s autonomous shuttle command center, the lab will allow UTC faculty and students to develop and operate their own autonomous system and learn from the technology in real time.

Students will be able to study how autonomous systems are designed and developed, operated, monitored, maintained and deployed in a public transportation setting. Faculty will be able to build curriculum around the technology, test new ideas and involve students directly in research.

“What I find most exciting is that our students will not simply be studying the future of transportation,” Sartipi said. “They will be helping create it, right here in Chattanooga.”

The experience could prepare students for careers in autonomous vehicle systems and operations, connected infrastructure, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and command center design and management.

“We want Chattanooga to be a place where new technologies are not only implemented, but they’re developed, they’re studied, they’re improved and where our graduates truly are leading the industries that those technologies create,” Bruce said.

CARTA CEO Charles Frazier said the lab will give students and researchers a chance to learn alongside a working transportation system.

“The technology operating on our streets will also become a classroom,” Frazier said. “Students will learn alongside these living systems, researchers will study them, and existing CARTA employees will develop new skills.”

Speakers at the grant announcement also included CARTA Chief of Staff Scott Wilson, Federal Transit Administration Associate Administrator Connor Torossain, Chattanooga City Councilwoman Raquetta Dotley, EPB CEO Janet Rehberg, CARTA Chairman Johan de Nysschen and Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly.