Graduate student developing tools to test AV-human interaction in simulation

Published November 24, 2025

Vivek Viswam, a MS Data Science student, is developing a simulation environment to test different autonomous vehicles (AV) and human-driven vehicle interaction scenarios as part of an ongoing research project under Dr. Chaozhe He, an assistant professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University at Buffalo's (UB) Safe and Efficient Autonomous Systems Lab. 

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Vivek Viswam.

Vivek Viswam

As part of the project, he recently created a Robot Operating System package for Autoware, an open-source software stack for self-driving vehicles, to exchange agents' state information and use the received data to perceive participating agents without relying on point clouds over the internet. 

Combining this recent work with his earlier efforts on the CARLA Simulator, an open-source platform for autonomous driving research, allows seamless co-simulation of agents (AVs and human-controlled vehicles) to connect over the internet. 

For several months, Viswam worked closely with the University of Michigan’s (UMich) Mcity team to develop and test a mixed reality simulation environment. This setup enabled bidirectional communication between UMich’s autonomous Lincoln vehicle on Mcity’s test track and UB’s Transportation Research and Visualization Lab’s (TRAVL) driving simulator. 

He assisted Ye Wang, a PhD student from the Department of Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering (CSEE), in integrating TRAVL’s pedestrian simulator into the mixed reality environment. On October 3, 2025, Viswam successfully demonstrated this mixed reality simulation at an event celebrating the founding of the UMich Transportation Research Institute and the 10th anniversary of the Mcity Test Facility.

He participated alongside Wang, Dr. He, Dr. Kevin Hulme, program manager for the Stephen Still Institute for Sustainable Transportation and Logistics, Dr. Austin Angulo, CSEE assistant professor, Dr. Irina Benedyke, CSEE assistant professor, and the Mcity team.

Viswam completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering and worked as a software engineer for two years before joining UB as a graduate student.