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Dr Donough Wilson Dr Wilson is innovation lead at aviation, defence, and homeland security innovation consultants, VIVID/futureVision. His defence innovations include the cockpit vision system that protects military aircrew from asymmetric high-energy laser attack. He was first to propose the automatic tracking and satellite download of airliner black box and cockpit voice recorder data in the event of an airliner’s unplanned excursion from its assigned flight level or track. For his ‘outstanding and practical contribution to the safer operation of aircraft’ he was awarded The Sir James Martin Award 2018/19, by the Honourable Company of Air Pilots. Paul Weighell Paul has been involved with electronics, computer design and programming since 1966. He has worked in the real-time and failsafe data acquisition and automation industry using mainframes, minis, micros and cloud-based hardware on applications as diverse as defence, Siberian gas pipeline control, UK nuclear power, robotics, the Thames Barrier, Formula One and automated financial trading systems. Ian Williams-Wynn Ian has been involved with unmanned and autonomous systems for more than 20 years. He started his career in the military, working with early prototype unmanned systems and exploiting imagery from a range of unmanned systems from global suppliers. He has also been involved in ground-breaking research including novel power and propulsion systems, sensor technologies, communications, avionics and physical platforms. His experience covers a broad spectrum of domains from space, air, maritime and ground, and in both defence and civil applications including, more recently, connected autonomous cars. Unmanned Systems Technology’s consultants Unmanned Systems Technology | June/July 2019 15 General Motors has applied for a US patent for a system for retrofitting automation to vehicles that were not originally designed for it (writes Peter Donaldson). The idea is to enable the roll-out of autonomy much quicker and less expensive than through purpose- designed autonomous cars alone. While UGV kits have been developed for many vehicles going back at least to the DARPA Grand Challenge series, the fact that GM is doing it as part of its Cruise initiative and is aiming it at mass-market vehicles is significant. The patent application details the system, subsystems and preferred embodiments with some variations. Core elements are a sensor suite, a central computer and interfaces for the steering, brakes and throttle, and the user. With forward- and rear-facing cameras in a roof-mounted module, the sensor suite also includes radar and sonar sensors in the front valance, a GPS receiver and an inertial measurement unit. While the autonomy software resides in the central computer, the heart of the system’s ability to be adapted to existing vehicles is in the interfaces to the car’s controls, which are controlled by the central computer. GM’s preferred embodiment of the throttle interface takes advantage of drive-by-wire technology by feeding an electronic signal into the throttle body. The throttle interface includes a driver circuit that produces the throttle signal that imitates the accelerator pedal, for example, and a switching relay that allows the throttle interface to switch between the outputs of the driver circuit and the accelerator pedal. The brake interface might include both a brake actuator and a pedal sensor. The actuator might consist of a rotary electric motor that presses the brake pedal by winding a steel cable around a spool, tightening the cable. This is an implementation that would also allow a human driver to add more brake pressure. The steering interface also responds to inputs from the central computer, preferably applying torque to the steering column with one or more electric motors, with a means of disengaging them in case of a malfunction. It could also include steering position and strain sensors, the latter providing a means of detecting when the human driver is trying to turn the wheel. In all cases, the software would be designed to manage smooth transition between human and computer control. Mass retro roll-out Driverless cars General Motors’ Cruise initiative signals the company’s aims for automation retrofits for the mass market