Unmanned Systems Technology 004 | Delair-Tech DT18 | Autopilots | Rotron RT600 | Unmanned surface vehicles | AMRC | Motion control | Batteries

12 Platform one Autumn 2015 | Unmanned Systems Technology The UK government has launched a £20m competitive fund for collaborative r&d into driverless vehicles, along with a code of practice for testing. The fund is part of a £100m scheme to look at areas such as safety, reliability, and how vehicles can communicate with each other and the environment around them, with bids closing at the end of September 2015. The code of practice provides the industry with the necessary framework to trial cars safely in real-life scenarios, and to create more sophisticated versions of the safety models that already exist. The code has implications for technology developers, for example the stipulation that a minimum of 30 s worth of data must always be stored so that if a driverless car is involved in an accident then its cause can be determined. Other driverless vehicles, called pavement A start-up company in California is developing an autonomous and driverless shuttle based around 3D mapping. Auro is a spin-off from the robotics research group at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, West Bengal, where the team has been working on the technology for the past four years. It is now part of a popular start-up accelerator in the US called Y Combinator, and the shuttle, called the Auro Prime, is aimed at university campuses. Auro Prime uses multi-level scanning lasers coupled with stereo cameras and automotive radar to provide 360 º vision to handle a campus environment and its many pedestrians. The scanners and cameras provide obstacle detection and collision avoidance, road and lane detection, and following and adaptive speed control, as well as pedestrian detection and avoidance. The shuttles relies on a prior 3D map of the environment to localise itself and interpret road topography. Navigation is via GPS coupled with a ten-axis inertial navigation system to provide more data when GPS is not available. ‘pods’, must have someone who can control them remotely to bring them into a safe state in the event of a problem, which has implications for both the control systems and security. The pods will be tested in 2016 as part of an £8m project in London called GATEway. Passengers can input their destinations using a touchscreen on the vehicle, or through a mobile app. Underlying software figures out the optimum route to reach the destination safely. Other driverless vehicles under test on public roads must have a driver who can take over if the autonomous system fails, and if there is an accident then the liability lies with the driver. In the case of the driverless pods it lies with the remote controller of the vehicle. Bids due for car safety r&d Prime project on campus Driverless vehicles 3D mapping Pavement ‘pods’ are to be tested for safety and security as part of a project in London Auro Prime’s driverless shuttle