Peachtree Corners could become the birthplace of new self-driving technology used in cars sold to the public in the near future.
The Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners, the Gwinnett city’s publicly funded innovation lab, recently purchased a Ford Edge vehicle with self-driving capabilities. The city will allow private companies to test their autonomous driving systems in the car.
Instead of driving on a closed course, the car will travel on Technology Parkway alongside other vehicles and pedestrians.
The test vehicle is decked out with a large rooftop rack, allowing companies to install their own equipment for testing. It also has sensors and other devices, letting engineers view the data they gather from a central control room.
Rather than testing a driverless experience, most of the technology tested in the car will detect its surroundings to automatically make decisions, such as braking when approaching another car in front of it or correcting its position in a lane.
Any technology tested in the vehicle would still require a driver behind the wheel, said Brandon Branham, chief technology officer and assistant city manager for Peachtree Corners.
To ensure public safety, the city plans to thoroughly vet companies before letting them test, Branham said. And if the company plans to test fully autonomous technology, it would be required to test elsewhere first, he said.
The public still can’t purchase a fully autonomous vehicle at a car dealership, but companies are getting closer to making it a reality, Branham said.
“We see ourselves as that proving ground that interacts on a public road to help us get there,” Branham said. “We’re not there yet. We’re getting closer, but you still need facilities like The Curiosity Lab to get us to that step where the technology is able to do it and the public is comfortable with it.”
Branham has received phone calls from interested companies nearly every other day since advertising the car, he said. Companies will use the test vehicle for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, depending on the scope of the technology they test.
After finding many startups developing self-driving technology lacked a test vehicle, the lab purchased one in the hopes it’d attract companies to locate their offices in Peachtree Corners, Branham said. The car cost about $30,000, and the lab spent an additional $1,000 for the rack, he said.
This isn’t the city’s first venture into self-driving technology. In 2020, Peachtree Corners debuted self-driving e-scooters, which the city plans to keep cruising through town. The city also launched a self-driving shuttle service in town for a few months in 2019.
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