MSU Research Foundation Professor Using Neuroscience to Stop Phantom Braking

MSU Research Foundation Professor, Dr. Xiaoming Liu, is part of a team of MSU researchers working to understand and resolve sudden braking issues in vehicles equipped with driver-assistance technologies.

Dr. Xiaoming Liu is an MSU Research Foundation Professor at the MSU Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

EAST LANSING, Mich. –– When vehicle owners reported issues of “phantom braking” in cars equipped with driver-assistance technologies, where the brakes suddenly engaged without apparent cause, researchers at Michigan State University wanted to understand the causes and find preventative solutions. Dr. Xiaoming Liu, an MSU Research Foundation Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, is among a group of researchers helping make autonomous vehicles smarter and safer in the future, thanks to a $1.2 million grant that MSU secured from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

“Frequent phantom braking incidents can erode confidence in autonomous driving technologies,” said Qiben Yan, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering. “If riders perceive the technology as unpredictable or unreliable, they’ll be less likely to embrace it.”

Autonomous vehicles have a vision system, composed of multiple cameras and radar, that uses radio waves to gather information the car leverages to navigate the world around it. But projected light can sometimes deceive the systems into recognizing false objects. The new NSF grant will help researchers study how cameras see these phantom objects and identify ways to keep the vision systems more secure and resilient against hackers. The research borrows from human perception studies to understand the Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems behind the vision systems.

Liu is a MSU Research Foundation Professor, a title is granted to highly accomplished current or incoming faculty members recommended by their college or dean. These distinguished researchers excel in their fields, furthering scholarly, disciplinary, or research areas crucial to MSU. Recipients retain the title throughout their tenure and typically receive scholarly support for the first five years after recognition. More than 60 professors have been honored with the MSU Research Foundation Professor title.

Read the full story at msutoday.msu.edu