The University of Iowa’s longstanding leadership in driving simulation research was on full display last week at NASA-Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. NASA hosted a major workshop on “Lunar Autonomy Mobility” for the South Pole Pathfinder/Rover project, where the University of Iowa was represented by current and former faculty, researchers, and alumni.

Podcast host Peggy Smedley and Dan McGehee, director of the Driving Safety Research Institute, discuss distracted driving research, physiological changes that happen with smartphones, and the most dangerous type of distraction.

Omar Ahmad, deputy director of DSRI, will be awarded the prestigious 2025 Board of Regents Staff Excellence Award for his exceptional leadership, dedication, and contributions to the University of Iowa, the state, and the broader research community.

The Driving Safety Research Institute works with students from across the country, and learn about their research on assessing driver monitoring systems, understanding of advanced driver assistance systems, connected simulation, and new features to miniSim in our 2024 Year in Review.

The University of Iowa recently completed a research project on a self-driving van. Specifically, it’s looking at how these automated vehicles could work in rural parts of the state.

The University of Iowa Driving Safety and Research Institute recently completed a research project to help rural America. The project hopes to combat challenges facing rural communities across Iowa and the nation.

Researchers at the Driving Safety Research Institute at the University of Iowa have completed more than three years of testing to learn the challenges automated vehicles encounter when operating on rural roads.

The National Science Foundation features our partners at the Hank Virtual Environments Lab and our facility at DSRI in a new video on children crossing roads with self-driving cars.

A new study from University of Iowa researchers examines how converting four-lane roads to three-lane roads impacts emergency responses.

The Gazette reports: The UI Driving Safety Research Institute — home to the National Advanced Driving Simulator — recently landed $2 million from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to assess how effective new driver monitoring systems might be at determining if someone is driving drunk.

The University of Iowa Driving Safety Research Institute was recently awarded $2 million from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to analyze the effectiveness of driver monitoring systems on their ability to detect if someone is driving while drunk—specifically, if they are over the legal limit or not.

Our 2022 Annual Report has been recognized by the 30th Annual Communicator Awards by the Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts (AIVA).

Safety Research Using Simulation (SAFER-SIM) is a grant-funded Tier 1 University Transportation Center that shares its research with both students and researchers. See a summary of its impact over the last 10 years.

Researchers at DSRI have combined data sets from six past studies that all looked at the use of various driver monitoring systems (DMS) to detect drowsiness, distraction, and other types of impairment.

In a multi-year project to connect the NADS-1 and NADS-2 simulators into the same virtual environment, the DSRI team upgraded the hardware and vehicle cab of the NADS-2 simulator. A new full cab is in the NADS-2 space, with a motion base for the cab that uses the miniSim architecture.

Our miniSim program is now supporting a few major upgrades plus more upgrades that will be available soon to miniSim users.

Our investigators have been working on a series of studies analyzing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) technology and consumer understanding of ADAS features.

2023 was a year of driver monitoring systems (DMS) analyses for both cannabis and alcohol detection. DMS projects were collaborations between the University of Colorado, Swinburn University, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), and Seeing Machines.

University of lowa mechanical engineering student Kenneth Reichert has worked on building a custom half-cab simulator alongside miniSim team members for the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.