Unmanned Systems Technology 007 | UMEX 2016 report | Navya ARMA | Launch & recovery systems | AIE 225CS | AUVs | Electric motors | Lethal autonomous weapons

26 I n the French industrial town of Lyon, an autonomous electric vehicle technology has beaten other European and US developments to the first commercial roll-out of a driverless vehicle system. The ARMA platform, launched in October 2015 as an autonomous mass transit system, carries up to 15 people at speeds of up to 25 kph and has already been demonstrated operating autonomously on public roads, at the 2015 ITS Exhibition in Bordeaux (see sidebar: Trials). The company behind the technology, Navya, believes ARMA has the potential to be the first system certified to operate to the SAE Level 5 safety specification. SAE Level 5 is the highest level of autonomous operation, with no user- accessible steering wheel or brake. Developing a system for Level 5 from the start has been a key part of the engineering philosophy of Navya and its predecessor company (see sidebar: History), and this has had implications for the architecture, from the safety features to the sensor and data architectures. That means the architecture has to demonstrate that the vehicle can be used safely without any human intervention. That places much more emphasis on the sensor architecture and how the data from the sensors is processed. Many of the trials in the US and Europe are aimed at demonstrating that systems designed to Level 5, such as the Google pod, are safe to use alongside pedestrians and other traffic. This challenge is demonstrated by the fact that Navya’s trial in Sion, Switzerland, still havstaff aboard to stop the vehicle if necessary. The ARMA is 2.05 m wide, 4.75 m long and 2.55 m high, with a ground Nick Flaherty investigates the technology behind the first public driverless vehicle system Future shuttle The ARMA engineering prototype is designed for SAE level 5 April/May 2016 | Unmanned Systems Technology