Autonomy
Autonomy at Wisconsin
Supports: Applied Artificial Intelligence · Contested Logistics
Autonomous systems are reshaping every domain — land, air, sea, and space — and the hardest problems are no longer just algorithms. They are trust, teaming, testing, and fielding. UW–Madison brings all four together: human-centered robotics research, federally designated proving grounds, physics-based simulation, and the human factors science of how people and machines work as one.
Embodied AI — engineering autonomous systems to enhance human capability and quality of life — is one of the College of Engineering’s six Engineering Moonshots.
Research Strengths
human-robot interaction · human-machine teaming · connected & automated vehicles · physics-based simulation · off-road autonomy · maritime & aquatic robotics · agricultural autonomy · human factors & trust in automation · AV testing & evaluation
Anchors & Assets
Robotics & Human-Machine Teaming
Robotics@UW connects more than twenty laboratories across engineering and computer sciences. The People and Robots Laboratory leads human-centered research on how people and robots collaborate, including human-robot teaming for aircraft manufacturing in partnership with NASA and Boeing; the Collaborative Robotics Laboratory studies robot teaching and physical collaboration; the Autonomous & Resilient Controls Laboratory develops verification and control methods for trustworthy autonomous systems; and the Robot Teaching and Teaming Laboratory builds the teaming approaches that make robots useful partners.
Maritime & Aquatic Autonomy
The Marine Robotics Laboratory designs and controls aquatic robots for complex, real-world water environments: autonomous surface-vehicle platforms, bio-inspired robotic swarms, and learning-augmented control for reliable, coordinated autonomy on the water. It is the campus research base for autonomous systems on the Great Lakes.
Proving Grounds & Testing
The Traffic Operations and Safety (TOPS) Laboratory leads the Wisconsin Automated Vehicle Proving Grounds — one of 10 proving grounds designated by the U.S. Department of Transportation — spanning a 400-acre test facility, a four-mile road circuit, and a connected-vehicle corridor through Madison itself.
Simulation Born at Wisconsin
The Simulation-Based Engineering Lab develops Project Chrono, an open-source physics engine born at UW–Madison and backed by U.S. Army investment — used by hundreds of organizations to model everything from Army trucks and tanks in off-road conditions to NASA lunar rovers. The lab’s annual MaGIC consortium draws the Army Research Office, national laboratories, and industry to Madison.
Human Factors & Trust in Automation
Industrial and systems engineering researchers study how humans trust, supervise, and adapt to automation — the science that determines whether autonomous systems succeed in the real world, and the discipline behind human-in-the-loop testing from driving simulators to human-machine teams.
Perception & Machine Vision
Autonomy is only as good as what it can see. The Wisconsin Computational Imaging and Vision Laboratory designs new computational cameras and the physics- and learning-based algorithms that interpret what they capture, including single-photon 3D imaging and time-of-flight sensing for low-light and long-range perception, while the Wisconsin AI and Vision Lab advances the multimodal scene understanding that lets machines make sense of the world.
The Future of Autonomy
Wisconsin’s autonomy story extends beyond campus. Regional initiatives such as Autonomous Heartland envision Wisconsin and the Great Lakes corridor as a natural home for autonomous and maritime systems research, development, testing, evaluation, and manufacturing, pairing the state’s shipbuilding and manufacturing base with its research strength and test assets. A Great Lakes multi-domain autonomous test range gives the joint force’s proposed Autonomous Warfare Command exactly what it needs. WINS connects UW–Madison researchers, students, and partners to that statewide and regional ecosystem.
From Classroom to Competition
The autonomy workforce starts with students. Wisconsin Autonomous, a multidisciplinary team of more than 40 undergraduate and graduate students, designs and builds self-driving vehicles for national competition — currently the SAE and General Motors AutoDrive Challenge™ II, with a racing pedigree that includes the Indy Autonomous Challenge. Its alumni graduate having already built, tested, and fielded autonomous systems. Other student teams include Wisconsin Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, which builds autonomous submarines, and Wisconsin Robotics.
The Dual-Use Imperative
Autonomy built for the mission transforms civilian life. Collaborative robots raise manufacturing productivity and take on the most dangerous jobs. Automated vehicles promise safer roads and mobility for those who cannot drive. Agricultural autonomy helps farms do more with fewer hands. The simulation engine that models Army vehicles guides NASA rovers, construction equipment, and industrial machinery. The human-machine teaming science that makes military autonomy trustworthy makes workplace automation better partners with human operators.
Why It Matters
Autonomy is reshaping every domain of competition and conflict — from contested logistics and autonomous resupply to unmanned maritime systems to human-machine teams that multiply what every user can do. The decisive issues are trust, testing, and fielding at scale, and they are the questions Wisconsin research addresses.
WINS connects mission partners to Wisconsin’s autonomy researchers, proving grounds, and the statewide ecosystem ready to build what the mission needs.