Machine Shop

To supplement and support transportation research, VTTI has a fully–equipped automotive repair and fabrication shop for modification and instrumentation of experimental vehicles and infrastructure.

Some of the equipment available in the machine shop includes the following:

  • Welding: TIG, MIG, stick welders.
  • Cutting: plasma arc cutter, horizontal band saw.
  • Computer Numerical Control Mill, Machining: drill press, engine lathe, vertical mill, power threader.
  • Computer aided design workstations.
  • Miscellaneous Tools: powder coating, sheet metal bending brake, hand tools, pipe bender, vehicle lift, electronic diagnostic tools.

Garages

VTTI has two garage bays in the main building and four additional garage bays in the accompanying warehouse. All garages can be isolated for confidential research, contractor-dedicated facilities, or separate tool and work rooms.

These facilities are also used to support the maintenance and expansion of Smart Road systems and capabilities, and store equipment necessary for VTTI research and Smart Road operations.

Vehicle Fleet

VTTI's instrumented-vehicle fleet can be quickly tailored to the specifications of a particular project. These vehicles are capable of recording a variety of data in real-time from a suite of sensors and inconspicuous cameras.

The vehicles include:

  • 2002 Ford Econoline™ Mobile Traffic Laboratory, including an Autoscope Solo Pro™ wide-area video vehicle detection system, an Autoscope Image Sensor™ (AIS), a pneumatic mast (45-foot maximum raised height) with color pan/tilt/zoom cameras, a computer system, and a videocassette player/recorder
  • 2002 Cadillac Escalade
  • 2002 Cadillac Seville
  • 2002 Chevrolet Cavalier
  • 2001 Saab 504-ASR
  • 2000 Chevrolet Impala, including wireless communications with intersection infrastructure, visual, auditory, and haptic displays, and automatic braking capabilities
  • 2000 Ford Explorer, including attachments to test alternate headlamp configurations
  • 1999 Ford Contour
  • 1999 Ford Crown Victoria
  • 1999 Ford Explorer, including attachments to test alternate headlamp configurations
  • 1997 Ford Taurus
  • 1995 Oldsmobile Aurora
  • 1997 Volvo, VN series, class 8 tractor, along with a 14.63-m (48-ft) trailer
  • 1994 Peterbilt model 379 with sleeper

All of these vehicles have been used in a number of safety and human factors experiments. Experimental areas that have been studied with the VTTI vehicle fleet include in-vehicle displays, driver distraction, collision warning and avoidance, fatigue assessment, navigation systems, and use of in-vehicle devices. In addition to these vehicles, VTTI owns a small number of experimental support vehicles, such as pickup trucks and passenger vans.