Dr. Hongkai Yu and Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins Developing Training Simulations for Ohio Department of Transportation’s Snow Plow Drivers

During the snow season, maintaining road surface quality is job #1 for the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT). If truck drivers with insufficient training plow snow on busy Ohio roads under adverse weather and traffic conditions, serious safety issues can result. To make sure that plow drivers are ready for these challenging situations, Dr. Hongkai Yu, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), has been awarded a two-year, $400,000 grant to develop comprehensive driving simulations customized to ODOT's needs.

Dr. Yu is joined by Co-PI Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins, an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). Their team is creating enhanced and comprehensive plow driver training that improves ODOT's truck driving simulator (a Doron Precision 660 Truckplus) by adding "plowable" snow to custom 3D maps and creating training scenarios for inexperienced drivers. The photo above shows a CSU PhD student testing the enhanced truck-driving simulator on the customized Ohio 3D map.

Learn more about Dr. Yu's Vision and AI Lab here.