TTI has developed an augmented-reality environment where real entities (vehicles and traffic signal operation) are combined with simulated traffic and displayed on a screen. The first-of-its-kind approach — called CONnected Vehicle Assessment Simulation (CONVAS) — marries the cost-effectiveness of computer simulation with actual roadway operations to produce an efficient yet dependable evaluation mechanism for the Federal Highway Administration. TTI researchers developed an enhanced hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) simulation by incorporating an actual CV on a roadway network into a simulation model and displaying simulated CVs inside the real vehicle at the same time. This enables development and testing of advanced CV applications or strategies by allowing assessments of how CVs respond to each other and other entities such as pedestrians, emergency vehicles and transit vehicles in a controlled environment. This is the first time HITL simulation has ever been applied in this way.