If every road was straight and the weather always sunny and warm, self-driving—or autonomous—vehicles would have little trouble getting from point A to point B.

If only.

In reality, making autonomous vehicles part of our future will require technology that not only keeps self-driving vehicles on the road in perfect conditions, but also guides them safely through snow, fog and other challenging weather and traffic conditions.

That’s where Michigan State University comes in.

Working in a College of Engineering-based research center called Connected and Autonomous Networked Vehicles for Active Safety, or CANVAS, MSU researchers are perfecting the sensing and perception algorithms that will tell an MSU-created autonomous car where to go, no matter the weather or traffic conditions.

“We are studying the challenges associated with driving autonomously in severe weather conditions,” says Hayder Radha, CANVAS director and professor of electrical and computer engineering. “That includes heavy snow, fog and even extreme low temperatures, which can affect navigation.”

Radha says MSU is working to perfect radar sensing, “which could be one of the most dependable sensors that an autonomous vehicle could rely on.”

In addition to helping the car make its way through snow, rain or gloom of night, the radar detects objects and can distinguish what they are, a process known as “classification.”

“It will be able to tell if that object is a pedestrian or a bike or another vehicle,” Radha says. “Is it something that is going to move? Then it can help the car make the decision on how to respond.”

Radha says radar could become almost as good as a camera in helping to achieve what he calls “situational awareness.”