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

26 Dossier | Auve Tech Iseauto five first prototypes, in seven months the team developed and produced several next-gen versions of the Iseauto to be suitable for public street operations across Europe. This included their use in autonomous mobility collaborations such as the Fabulos project (as discussed in UST 37, April/May 2021) which saw Iseautos running in Estonia and Greece. “In our first prototype build, we weren’t focused so much on things like strength analysis, crash tests and optimising every last bit of the system,” Mossov says. “We were just focused on making all the body panels and frame parts from the ground up, and giving our vehicle its own face so it wouldn’t just be a regular car with autonomous capabilities. “On the plus side though, that means we’ve become adept at really fast manufacturing, to the point that we have all the tools and machinery for making moulds, for working with different types of plastic, fibreglass, metals and so on in- house now. “We also don’t yet have a full understanding of how certification legislation for driverless cars is going to evolve. We’ve adopted a number of existing automotive standards that we’re quite certain will come into play for autonomous road vehicles, but beyond that we’re just trying to predict how safety requirements will pan out, and plan ahead for that with how our autonomous and remote systems work.” Adopting those standards came with consequences, such as designing traffic- compliant indicators and lights around the vehicle so that drivers can anticipate visually its steering and braking intentions. Also, standardised grades of glass were used for the windows, and physical strength tests and FEA simulations were run on the seat frames and seatbelts to ensure they would not pose a risk of harm to passengers. Also, an array of fault scenarios, braking scenarios and manoeuvres were run in a number of road tests, and throughout all operations a human teleoperator is in the loop, to take remote control of the Iseautos if a safety-critical error or alert occurs in a scenario. These days, the technology is considered to be essentially at full readiness and fully matured. Mossov comments that the taxi’s next design iteration may be the last, as most of the adjustments made to it (compared with its forerunners) are design-for- manufacture changes that will see the chassis and body made from mass- producible components. It will also feature some durability changes and a number of dual April/May 2022 | Unmanned Systems Technology The Iseautos have been operated in numerous closed campus-type locations, with 18 vehicles built over the course of development Among the earliest iterative developments was the addition of regulation-standard automotive lights for operating in other countries, such as Greece