Unmanned Systems Technology 036

82 when this shuttle was being developed for digital, autonomous drive-by-wire intelligence, and hydrogen technology wasn’t mature enough for us to adopt it in this kind of fleet vehicle.” Also, the Celtic Manor roads, including the route between the clubhouse and the first tee, are notably hilly. That gave considerable opportunity for regenerative braking – which Aurrigo incorporated into its electric powertrain – to contribute to the shuttle’s range and endurance. “Before starting this job we’d calculated that we probably wouldn’t need to charge it at all during the day, only at night,” Garner recounts. “That said, just to be on the safe side, we did plug it in back at the hotel workshop for between an hour and 90 minutes each day while everyone was having lunch.” A safety operator would sit in the ‘driving’ seat at all times for monitoring and safety purposes, to take control in the event of an emergency, as required by law for any autonomous vehicle operating in the UK and most countries around the world with similar laws. As Garner notes, “We felt it was important to design the shuttle to be operable as a conventional EV. If needed, the safety operator can toggle the drive- by-wire system back to manual via a pedal, which directs the vehicle to come to a halt safely somewhere nearby. “Once it has stopped it can be driven manually, and where allowed, the operator can switch off their override and let the autonomous mode take over. “We feel that’s important because, right now, autonomous vehicles are only really operated as such for 20-30% of their runtime. Every minute that they self-drive, they have to have a whole engineering team watching them both remotely and on the dashboard itself; they’re not freeing up labour in terms of the programmers and mechanics who need to configure and maintain them. “That will certainly change in the future, but for now a manual driving mode needs to be easily accessible, so that companies buying the vehicles can increase their daily runtime. This feature is unique, and we’ve secured orders off the back of it.” In addition to transporting players, caddies and sets of clubs, the shuttle would transport anyone who needed a lift to and from the tee and the clubhouse. Tee-off began at 7am each day, with sportspeople and production crew members carried earlier in the morning, and caterers and waiting staff for meals and refreshments throughout the latter parts of the day. By the end of the Open, the shuttle had made about 220 round trips, amounting to around 440 miles. The data link between the shuttle and Aurrigo’s on-site workshop used a Vodafone 4G link, to ensure a constant stream of system performance data for Aurrigo’s engineers to monitor. Garner adds that in addition to using Vodafone SIM cards, the telecoms company offered to set up a pair of amplifier masts to strengthen the wireless signal, but during the mapping and initial operating runs this was found to be unnecessary for the bandwidth and update rate of the shuttle data. Post-operation At the end of each day, the shuttle was stored in a garage in the hotel complex near the workshop, and put through a maintenance checklist similar to that at the start of the day, with all the electrical, February/March 2021 | Unmanned Systems Technology Aurrigo shuttle All-electric Propulsion: 22 kW electric motor Power: 47 kWh battery Dimensions: 580 x 254 x 228 cm Capacity: up to 12 people Range: 124 miles (199.5 km) Specifications Aurrigo continues to develop its autonomous baggage dolly following successful prototype trials at Heathrow Terminal 5 A manual driving mode needs to be easily accessible for now, so that companies can increase their daily runtime