Engineering, psychology, and more
- 2:30-5:00 p.m. Monday, Oct. 20
- Buses depart from Hilton
- Free (registration required)
- Limit: 40 participants
- Please wear closed-toed shoes
Fans of motorsports and engineering alike will enjoy this glimpse at tomorrow’s alternative fuel technology, racing and driver safety. First, you’ll tour the Center for Automotive Research, where our students are designing and building the transportation of tomorrow. You’ll go behind the scenes in the workshops for the Buckeye Bullet, the world’s fastest electric vehicle; Buckeye Current, the all-electric motorcycle that took third place at the Isle of Man TT Zero race this summer; Formula SAE, small formula-style racing cars; and EcoCAR2, the student-redesigned, super-efficient Chevy Malibu that won the Department of Energy’s annual competition this year. Then you’ll make a stop at Ohio State’s Driving Simulation Laboratory, where researchers study driver behavior, including driver distraction, attention, stress and cognitive workload. A few lucky science writers will actually drive one of the simulators, which features a 260° front-projection screen and sits on a platform that gives a sense of motion much like driving a real car. In studies at the lab, researchers have a suite of devices available that can track drivers’ gaze, head direction, eyelid opening, blink rate and even pupil dilation—all while infrared imaging captures brain activity. The simulator has attracted researchers in linguistics, neurology, psychology, speech and hearing science and engineering.