Issue 41 Unmanned Systems Technology December/January 2022 PteroDynamics X-P4 l Sense & avoid l 4Front Robotics Cricket l Autonomous transport l NWFC-1500 fuel cell l DroneX report l OceanScout I Composites I DSEI 2021 report

56 Insight | Autonomous transport steering shaft to a DC motor driven by the autonomy engine, which outputs control orders based on the sensor inputs. If the driver acts on the steering, a torque sensor at the steering shaft detects this as counter- torque and the clutch is disengaged, allowing manual control once more. The route of the autonomous bus is 8 km long and is covered six times per day, with a (legally binding) speed cap of 20 kph. It follows a pattern down the length of Malaga’s port, with the autonomy specifically limited to the outermost half of the route relative to the city limits, where lighter traffic (and thus less danger to local drivers) is expected. Along with gathering more data from this trial, Irizar intends to continue internal r&d towards SAE Level 4 autonomy, and is keeping an eye out for new technologies that can make its self-driving systems more robust, before it considers any large-scale commercialisation of autonomous buses. Further north in Europe, Fusion Processing has continued progressing the case for autonomous transport in the UK, and is now running two new seminal projects aimed at automating bus services. We last spoke with Fusion Processing in early 2019 ( UST 25, April/May 2019), when the company was running the UK’s first autonomous bus trials alongside vehicle OEM Alexander Dennis and transport operator Stagecoach. Now it is supplying its CAVstar automated driving system for integration in an Orion E from Mellor Coachcraft for the MultiCAV project in 2022, which is aimed at trialling a bus service with SAE Level 4 autonomy in partnership with First Group and Oxfordshire County Council. “The all-electric base vehicle has been constructed and is going through sign- off checks with Mellor, after which it’ll be ready for us to fit out,” Jim Hutchinson, CEO of Fusion Processing, says. “We’ve also finished our procurements and unit builds in preparation for turning the Orion E into an autonomous vehicle.” CAVstar itself consists of Fusion Processing’s proprietary AI computer unit, with radar, Lidar, vision and ultrasonic sensors as needed for situational and environmental awareness, as well as predictive analytics for moving amid traffic and pedestrians, dynamic course plotting and precise calculations of control outputs. “After we’ve integrated the CAVstar’s various systems into the Orion E, we’ll put it through initial track testing, and then will come an approval process to begin road testing,” Hutchinson adds. “In this project, the CAVstar architecture we configure will include redundant processing units, sensors, and braking and steering actuation systems, as is appropriate for achieving Level 4 autonomy – safe automated driving without the need for driver intervention.” Simulated environment tests of the MultiCAV Orion E have already begun, and the simulations will continue once real-world track and road trials start, using the latter’s results to refine the accuracy and usefulness of the former. Fusion Processing has also integrated the CAVstar system into a Fiat Ducato crew van for testing Level 4 autonomy capabilities in advance of Project CAVforth, which is the next stage of autonomous bus trials with Alexander Dennis and Stagecoach. This project will see five Alexander Dennis E200 single-decker buses fitted with CAVstar suites, which will comprise a Level 4 autonomous 14 mile each-way pilot service near Edinburgh, Scotland. “The integration process is a little different between vehicle platforms, but you don’t need significant differences in sensor architectures between buses and minibuses – the actuation systems can be very different, but these are just drop- in parts for CAVstar,” Hutchinson says. “CAVforth is a larger project, with up to 10,000 passenger journeys per week being carried between a Park & Ride north of the Forth Bridge to a train and tram interchange outside Edinburgh. There will be some minor speed limit differences that we’ll account for in the programming, but by and large, buses all have to negotiate traffic lights and roundabouts in the same way, and react to pedestrians and cyclists with extreme care and safety.” Ferries Effectively all the world’s largest cities have either coasts, rivers or canals (or a combination of all three) and shifting the transport of people and goods from the roads to these relatively underused waterways could bring huge savings in fuel, medical costs (in terms of stress and emissions from commuting) and potentially wasting otherwise productive working time. December/January 2022 | Unmanned Systems Technology An Orion E from Mellor Coachcraft fitted with Fusion Processing’s CAVstar autonomy suite (Courtesy of Fusion Processing)