Uncrewed Systems Technology 043 l Auve Tech Iseauto taxi l Charging focus l Advanced Navigation Hydrus l UGVs insight l MVVS 116 l Windracers ULTRA l CES 2022 show report l ECUs focus I Distant Imagery

25 to showcase what we were able to do. Before then, we hadn’t really talked much about going commercial with it, but when we started looking around at competitors in the commercial space, we realised that we were actually ahead of most of them in terms of our technological readiness. “So that pushed us to decide to form a business out of the taxi, starting with campuses and eventually working in city roads, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce congestion by making shared public mobility efficient and convenient.” In the long term, Auve Tech plans to work with operating companies, where the former provides the technology and the partners run the transportation service. Development timeline The taxi is currently a cubic four- wheeled model (this is the Iseauto, but future models will have different names) with seating for eight passengers, and measuring 3500 by 2400 by 1500 mm in its outer dimensions and with an empty weight of 1200 kg. It is electrically powered, as mentioned by the option of using an all- electric battery system or a hydrogen fuel cell running on gaseous hydrogen stored in onboard tanks at 350 bar. To date, 18 vehicles have been built, some with very minor variations in how they have been assembled (along with the aforementioned energy storage differences). “As I mentioned, we made the first one after a year, with a lot of parts we made ourselves or integrating COTS systems where necessary, particularly in the drivetrain hardware,” Mossov says. “Meanwhile, programmers at the university handled a lot of the development of our first software platforms, as well as the electronics going into our control networks. “By the eighth or ninth month we were bringing the two halves together, and started testing the autonomy in the university campus, wrapping up our first round of tests by month 12.” Based on this first prototype, the team produced four more vehicles for development and operations in new closed areas including a zoo and an open air museum. Based on these Auve Tech Iseauto | Dossier Market research spurred the founding of this company to produce an autonomous taxi. Rory Jackson looks into its development Unmanned Systems Technology | April/May 2022 Cab drivers