Texas A&M to Develop $150 Million Center for Driverless, Robotics Technology
Burney Simpson
Texas A&M University is investing $150 million in a 2,000-acre research and development campus that will include autonomous vehicle research.
The campus will be both a development center for private firms and an educational hub for students offering four-year degrees.
Along with driverless technology, the campus will offer research on robotics, smart power grids, and water systems.
“It will bridge the ‘valley of death’ between product development and the marketplace,” M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of engineering, said in a statement.
The site is on a former military base in Bryan, Texas, about 100 miles from Houston, and Austin, the state capital.
The site now includes the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and is called the Riverside Campus. It will be renamed the RELLIS Campus.
The TTI has been active in connected vehicles, freight movement, and other driverless vehicle projects. In November it named Christopher Poe its connected and automated vehicle (CV/AV) transportation strategy lead.
It reported last year it was involved in 40 CA/AV projects at the federal, state and local level. The I-35 Connected Work Zone project involved long-haul commercial trucks gathering road information from highway sensors (See “Texas Tests Connected Freight Trucks Along I-35“).
Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp said the school is in talks with a number of companies to conduct research at the center, including Japan’s Kubota Tractors, according to the Fort Worth Star Telegram.
“Unless we create a lot of young farmers, driverless tractors may plow our fields in the not too-distant future. Otherwise, how are we going to feed the world?” Sharp said.
The school reported it already has the $150 million development costs locked down through a combination of private sector pledges and state budget funding.
The budget for the project calls for allocating $12 million to build the Advanced Research in Transportation Technology Building where companies will focus on autonomous vehicle technology.
The bulk of the budget, $73 million, will be spent on the Center for Infrastructure Renewal, which calls for assisting the private sector in applying new ideas to infrastructure redevelopment.
