Ford to Partner with U-Mich on Autonomous Car Research

To accelerate research into autonomous vehicle technology, Ford Motor Co. plans to lease one floor and co-locate more than 100 engineers at a new robotics lab being built by the University of Michigan on its Ann Arbor, Mich., campus.

The $75 million facility, which was announced earlier this year and is due to open in 2020, will house labs, offices and classrooms. It will include areas for machines to walk, fly, drive and swim, according to the partners.

To launch the partnership, Ford will move about a dozen researchers to another U-M research center by the end of the year. The carmaker, which has been developing autonomous vehicles for 10 years, already is using the university’s Mcity proving grounds to test such cars. It aims to have fully autonomous vehicles available for high-volume commercial use in 2021.

Professors Matthew Johnson-Roberson and Ram Vasudevan have been appointed to lead the school’s autonomous vehicle research team, which includes graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and researchers. Both professors began collaborating with Ford earlier this summer.

U-M’s College of Engineering also named Prof. Jessy Grizzle as director of robotics. A U-M professor of engineering since 1987, Grizzle has spent nearly two decades as a Ford consultant working on programs such as hybrid-electric vehicles.

U-M is one of only a handful of universities to offer advanced degrees in robotics. More than 35 faculty members work in the field.