California company coming to Logan County research facility

LOGAN COUNTY — The Transportation Research Center (TRC) in East Liberty will be the home of a new testing facility being built by the California driverless car technology firm WAYMO.

WAYMO’s Daniel Avraham said the company already has some cars with no drivers being used in Phoenix, Arizona. “WAYMO is working on developing the world’s most experienced driver which then can be applied to a variety of different platforms,” Avraham said.

The company’s vehicles can operate without a driver thanks to sensors that “see” other vehicles on the road, the speed and location of other vehicles and guide the car safely to its destination.

The TRC has 4,500 acres and is the nation’s largest independent vehicle testing facility, located 61 miles northeast of Dayton.  Planning for the facility began in the 1960′s as a project of the College of Engineering at Ohio State University. When it opened in the 1970′s it quickly attracted the attention of the auto industry worldwide.  Today it remains “closely aligned with Ohio State University” and prides itself as being a one-stop source for testing.

Brett Roubinek, CEO of TRC, said the variety of road surfaces for testing is a big draw for company vehicles and the technology that goes into them. “It’s the collection of all of those things including gravel, dirt roads, hills, anything that you might find out in the real world, you can find at our facility. And couple that then with services that our people offer and then that’s what attracts innovators in mobility to TRC,” Roubinek said.

WAYMO’s new facility at the TRC is expected to be in use by mid-summer. “TRC will enable us to do what’s called ‘closed course testing’ which is an instrumental part of the deployment of our technology which allows us to first test all aspects of our system before going on public roads,” Avraham said.

Cox Media Group