Dr. Peter Sweatman is a cofounding principal of CAVita and has over 30 years of experience in transportation research and innovation, and the application of R&D. That experience encompasses vehicles, drivers, and infrastructure and impinges on technology, policy, and strategic planning. He is a trusted national voice on safety, ITS, transportation research and education, connected and automated vehicles, and freight technology and policy. His professional experience covers private industry, academia, and government. He has worked extensively in Europe and Asia-Pacific as well as the United States.
Dr. Sweatman is the founder and former director of the Michigan Mobility Transformation Center (MTC) (2013 – 2016), and former director of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) (2004 – 2015). Under his leadership, MTC was created as an unprecedented $100M private-public ITS partnership with more than 50 major companies signed on as financial and R&D partners. Dr. Sweatman was responsible for the launch of the unique test facility Mcity, which was opened on July 20, 2015 and has set the bar for safe, off-roadway testing of automated vehicles. Mcity was called the “world’s coolest test facility” by Bloomberg.
Dr. Sweatman is a past chairman of the board of ITS America, and also served as founding chair of the ITS America Leadership Circle. He served on the U.S. Department of Transport’s ITS Advisory Committee, as well as a number of roles with the Society of Automotive Engineers. At the Transportation Research Board, he chaired the recent EU-US Symposium Towards Road Transport Automation, and served on the Committee on National Research Frameworks: Application to Transportation. He is currently working with the industrial consortium Together for Safer Roads.
On behalf of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), Dr. Sweatman chaired a joint EU-US Symposium: Towards Road Transport Automation in 2014. This select symposium of invited experts created three automated vehicle use cases that were subsequently included in the EC research program for 2016-17. The recently-published symposium report is a milestone in advanced transportation technology R&D collaboration between the U.S. and Europe: TRB Proceedings 52 Towards Road Transport Automation – Opportunities in Public-Private Collaboration.
CAVita LLC is a new partnership founded by Dr. Sweatman and Mr. Abbas Mohaddes. CAVita recently completed its first major assignment for the Transportation Research Board (TRB) and its Executive Committee. Under the project title “The design of new TRB approaches, including industry engagement and sponsorship” CAVita reviewed ten transformational technologies for their impact on transportation and devised new approaches to broad industry engagement, public-private collaboration and accelerated deployment of transformational technologies. The technologies investigated included connected vehicles, automated vehicles, cybersecurity, shared use services, smart cities, big data, internet of things, unmanned aerial systems, NextGen and 3D printing. TRB recently released e-Circular 208 authored by Mohaddes and Sweatman, entitled Transformational Technologies in Transportation: State of the Activities.
CAVita has developed an executive interaction series called CAVtalk. CAVtalk gatherings lead and facilitate regional and local conversations regarding connected and automated vehicles, with public/private executive participation and preparation of white papers documenting proceedings.