Clemson University and the United States Army DEVCOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC) announced an additional $22 million for a research partnership aimed at developing innovative virtual prototyping tools for designing the next generation of on- and off-road vehicles, with the U.S. government committing up to $100 million to the project. The U.S. Army contributed an initial $18 million for the center in 2020. An additional $22 million committed in 2021 was formally obligated on February 24, 2022. The Virtual Prototyping of autonomy-enabled Grounds Systems (VIPR-GS) Research Center at Clemson University is providing new simulation and digital engineering capabilities, as well as hardware demonstrations to increase efficiency in design-to-build processes in support of GVSC’s ambitious goals for rapid modernization of U.S. Army fleets.
Clemson University President Jim Clements and U.S. Army GVSC chief scientist David Gorsich made the announcement. They were joined by U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham and Zoran Filipi, founding director, Virtual Prototyping of Ground Systems (VIPR-GS) Center. The announcement took place at the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) campus in Greenville, South Carolina.
“The research endeavors at our main campus and innovation campuses throughout the state leverage the talent of our faculty, staff and students to equip our government and industry partners with the tools and workforce of the future,” continued Clements.
The recent allocation of funding brings the current commitment to Clemson from the Army to $40 million for VIPR-GS. In the year since the VIPR-GS Center was first announced, 65 faculty and 74 master’s and Ph.D. students have been added to support the research goals of advancing autonomous ground vehicle systems.
Research at the VIPR-GS Center is focused on autonomy-enabled ground vehicles, next-generation propulsion and energy systems, manned and unmanned teaming in unpredictable off-road environments, innovative simulations, and digital engineering tools to design off-road vehicle fleet’s systems of systems. The Department of Automotive Engineering’s hallmark Deep Orange program in the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences at Clemson engages students in hardware demonstrations and will provide a full-scale testbed for validating research outcomes.
