In October 2021, the University of Ottawa opened its Smart Connected Vehicles Innovation Centre in Kanata North, recognized as Canada’s largest technology hub.
The open-access centre offers rapid, low-cost experimentation and testing for connected and autonomous vehicles allowing researchers and industry partners to access self-driving car prototypes, drones, and certain types of ground robots. Its indoor experimental test bed is paired with state-of-the-art computing infrastructure for collecting vast amounts of data, along with powerful workstations for running advanced machine-learning models.
Not only is the centre embedded in one of Canada’s key connected autonomous vehicle (CAV) clusters and on Ottawa’s private test track, the centre is positioned to bring together experts from various fields — social scientists, economists, ethics and compliance specialists, and decision-makers, alongside engineers and computer scientists — to maximize innovation.