University of Waterloo Profile
Founded in 1957, the University of Waterloo is one of Canada’s leading comprehensive universities, with undergraduate and graduate programs in faculties of Applied Health Sciences, Arts, Engineering, Environment, Mathematics, and Science; and includes professional schools of Pharmacy, Optometry, Accounting and Architecture. The UW community also includes four federated university colleges: St. Jerome’s, Renison, St. Paul’s and Conrad Grebel; and associated research institutes, such as the Water Institute, Waterloo Institute of Nanotechnology (WIN), the Quantum Nano Centre (QNC), and the Schlegel Institute for Aging.
In just half a century, the University of Waterloo, located at the heart of Canada's technology hub, has become one of Canada's leading comprehensive universities with 35,000 full- and part-time students in undergraduate and graduate programs. Waterloo, as home to the world's largest post-secondary co-operative education program, embraces its connections to the world and encourages enterprising partnerships in learning, research and discovery. In the next decade, the university is committed to building a better future for Canada and the world by championing innovation and collaboration to create solutions relevant to the needs of today and tomorrow. For more information about Waterloo, visit uwaterloo.ca.
A major challenge currently facing all educational institutions is increased enrolments at a time when tuition fees and operating grants are highly constrained.
Background
The University of Waterloo is seeking to expand WatAuto, which is an experimental platform for research and demonstration in self-driving cars. We are adding two stock vehicles to WatAuto, each extended with an interface that allows the vehicle to receive brake/steer/and throttle commands from a computer. It will also have an integrated a sensor suite and a set of computers necessary to perceive the vehicle environment and enable the development of computer programs to operate the vehicle autonomously. The vehicles to be purchased are not autonomous yet; they will be converted into self-driving vehicles by adding new software that will be developed by the University of Waterloo.
The University of Waterloo invites qualified companies to submit proposals for the Autonomous Driving Research Vehicles in accordance with the terms of this Request for Proposal.
