GM has given UC Merced a gift that will keep on giving. Professor
Stefano Carpinof the
School of Engineeringhas received a $23,000 gift from General Motors Research and Development to help support his studies on stochastic analysis of distributed architecture systems.
This is a perfect match, Carpin said of the collaboration between GM and UC Merced.
According to Carpin, GM first approached him in 2006 after establishing a research office in the Bay Area. GM was looking to collaborate with nearby universities to complement its long-term collaboration with UC Berkeley. Carpin said UC Merced is fortunate to be close enough to work with high-tech companies based in the Bay Area and other leading
researchuniversities.
Today’s cars embed many processors, similar to those found in our computers, though less powerful, Carpin said. These processors exchange many messages while the car is running.
Carpin will use the money to fund an exploratory project aimed to better characterize how messages are exchanged between car processors, with a special emphasis on timing issues. He anticipates it will lead to further collaborations in the area of intelligent vehicles control.
In the future, cars will be endowed with more intelligent components and sensors, similar to those routinely used in autonomous robots, said Carpin, a robotics researcher who joined the UC Merced faculty in January.
Carpin teaches a robot algorithms class at the graduate level that exposes UC Merced students to state-of-the-art solutions to critical problems in autonomous robotics and an introductory class in mobile robotics.
Carpin’s
graduatestudent, Andreas Kolling, has extensive background in the robotics field and is handling a large portion of the project.
