The city will soon have a say in the future of automobiles. Autonomous, driverless cars are already weaving their way through the internal roads of IIT-Hyderabad located at Kandi village on the outskirts of the city. The shuttle cars, as these are called, are transporting students and faculty within campus for the past two months.The closed four-wheeler electric car was completely developed from scratch at IIT’s TiHAN centre, which is the country’s first Autonomous Navigation Testbed (Aerial & terrestrials) facility and two of these autonomous vehicles- are now deployed on campus after a test run for nearly a year.
“The autonomous campus shuttle uses various sensors and related technology. It was tested and deployed on campus. It has a LiDAR-based navigation system,” said Prof P Rajalakshmi, professor of electrical engineering at the institute and director of the TiHAN centre.
Rajalakshmi said special data collection vehicles were deployed in the Hyderabad traffic to collect data which was used in the background research and development of the vehicles. The shuttle had just returned from its morning run at 12 noon and was resting at the charging station, among many other prototypes under various stages of testing and development, when STOI visited the centre.
Apart from the shuttle, the centre is developing various automated vehicles, including aerial, multiterrain and vehicles plying on the ground, promising next generation sustainable and safe mobility solutions. The centre is working towards the country’s policy framework for autonomous vehicles and standard operating procedures for automated vehicles.
The shuttle cars can be useful in controlled environments like warehouses, campuses, airports… “These are not just sustainable automated solutions but are also high on safety. The Indian government is already planning to have safe systems for highway monitoring, where automated mobility has a big role. These things are going to be a reality in future,” said Rajalakshmi.
