A National Science Foundation grant awarded to the University of Michigan is furthering the development of cybersecurity for autonomous vehicles. 89.1 WEMU’s Heather Irvine has more.
U-M builtMcity, the world's first proving ground for testing the performance and safety of connected autonomous vehicles. But research drives far beyond navigating just physical hazards. Professor Hafiz Malik at the Mcity test facility says autonomous vehicles are vulnerable to hacking and data theft.
"Vehicles are vulnerable to various security breaches even putting the lives of the occupants in danger."
This grant will fund a multilayer approach that includes developing safeguards against internal and external attacks as well as a significant educational component.
"We'll be training the students in our lab, including M-City, and we'll be developing the datasets that other researchers can benefit from."
Malik says the cyber-solutions they're working on at Mcity could potentially be adopted by the autonomous vehicle industry.
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— Heather Irvine is a writer/reporter for 89.1 WEMU News. Contact her at 734.487.3363 or email her studio@wemu.org