Robot City Arrives To Develop Self-Driving Cars

There is a new city in Michigan. It has a four-lane highway, featuring both an off-ramp and an on-ramp. It boasts a traffic circle, a tunnel, a bridge, some gravel roads and some tight, twisting curves. It will have your traditional traffic jams notorious with all major cities, as well as many pedestrians.

Only none of it is real. Think of this city, then, as the Truman Show — except rather than hidden cameras and Jim Carrey, this city features robotic pedestrians and self-driving cars.

The 32-acre facility called “M City” cost $6.5 million to create, and it houses 40 fake building facades, reports Bloomberg. It is described as a proving ground for self-driving vehicles. The metropolis, located at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, will be capable of simulating the chaos of modern cities in a controlled environment, making development faster and easier for automakers and tech companies looking to test their new technologies.

Until now, machines like Google’s autonomous car have been testing on public roads, with a mandatory driver at the wheel ready to take over if necessary. To date, the Google car has been involved in 14 accidents, none of which were its own fault.

Other manufacturers take to the public roads, too, as well as utilizing their own private testing facilities. Audi has even been sending its autonomous vehicles to lap racetracks across the world.