Michigan Science Center

It will still be a couple of years before passengers can cruise in one of Ford Motor Co.’s planned self-driving vehicles. But in the meantime, they can get a taste of the experience at Michigan Science Center.

MiSci on Friday debuted its first-ever autonomous vehicle exhibit, designed and built by Ford engineers. The interactive exhibit, which came to fruition after a year of planning, aims to educate the public about nascent self-driving technology and to spark the interest of the next generation of scientists, mathematicians and engineers who will one day design the vehicles of the future.

“We wanted to give kids the chance to experience, in a very human way, what an autonomous vehicle will see, how it will think, and how it will act when it’s deployed into future driving environments,” John Rich, Ford’s director of autonomous vehicle technology, told The Detroit News. 

The exhibit, which will be on display at MiSci indefinitely, was designed in a similar way to how the Dearborn automaker designs its actual vehicles. First, a team of Ford designers and engineers visited MiSci to learn what would interest their “customer” — in this case, kids who visit the museum.

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