Driving Autonomous Vehicles Over Sidewalks

Autonomous, self-driving vehicles have been a trending topic of conversation in last few days. Could you imagine fusion of this technology with mobility scooters?. A team of researchers from National University of Singapore and MIT recently took another direction and created a technology that can change the face of mobility scooter industry. They infused these mobility vehicles with driverless vehicles technology that will allow people with mobility issues to enjoy rides on sidewalks.

These scooters use the very same sensor configuration and controlling software that was used in test drive of autonomous cars and golf carts. The system has multiple software layers that are as follows :

● A lower-level control worthy algorithm permits the vehicle to respond instantly to environmental changes.

● The vehicle is also embedded with several route-planning algorithms.

● The vehicle also makes use of localization algorithms that helps it in finding location over the map.

● Map building algorithms are also there.

● Then there is a scheduling algorithm that distributed fleet resources.

● And lastly, an online blocking system that permits users to pre-schedule their rides

The same control software can be used for various other types of vehicles. The team working on this project was able to keep an up-to-date analysis of the vehicle’s performance and transfer of data and maps between different vehicles. They were also able to establish connection between different vehicles with each other over same route. One of the project’s leaders and electrical engineering and computer science professor from MIT, Daniela Rus likes to add, “If you have a uniform system where all the algorithms are the same, the complexity is much lower than if you have a heterogeneous system where each vehicle does something different. That’s useful for verifying that this multilayer complexity is correct.”

An associate mechanical engineering professor at NUS and co-leader of this project further adds, “Similarly, Once you have a better driver, you can easily transplant that to another vehicle that’s the same across different platforms.”