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A digital package for autonomous systems and self-driving vehicles
Project title: A digital package for autonomous systems and self-driving vehicles
Project short title: Autonomian
Number of project implementation agreement: 2018-1-EE01-KA202-047111
Registration number: 3975
Department: Department of Artificial Intelligence and Systems Engineering
Administrating department: Department of Artificial Intelligence and Systems Engineering
Finance fund: ERASMUS+
Project RTU role: project partner
Status: Ended
Project start date: 01.09.2018.
Project end date: 31.12.2021.
Title of grant issuer: ITT Group OÜ
General manager: Kārlis Berkolds
Administrative manager: Kārlis Berkolds
Total finance:
Projekta kopējais finansējums ir 231 622.00 EUR, projekta RTU daļas finansējums ir 47 900.00 EUR
Summary:

The transportation system we are used to live with for a 100 years is about to paradigm change at the moment. The new paradigm called Transport as a Service (TaaS), means that instead of using the car like today, but, as with existing ride-hailing or car-sharing services, vehicles will be booked or hailed through an app. But not only personal transportation but also cargo transportation is changing significantly. The leading technology behind this is the software driven autonomous systems, which has been come to intelligent enough to start replacing the human driver or operator. According to the report of Frost & Sullivan (F&S Autonomous Driving & Connected Mobility) the future of the automotive ecosystem is heading toward the integration of multiple domains, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), connected vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and V2X communication. The integration and shift in focus will make software-defined cars to be the essence of connected cars in future. Moreover, as the ecosystem expands, the market would notice extreme competition from both proprietary and open source solution providers.

The self- driving cars depict the most significant advancement in the history of engineering. In 2011, more than 30,000 people died on the roads of the European union and for every death there are four permanently disabling injuries. While the EU is committed to increase the safety on roads through various means, self driving cars can reduce or even eliminate the accidents from the roads. Another big change going on in transportation and autonomous systems is about drones. Nowadays, drones are considered an emerging market; their utilities are growing almost daily, providing new education and business opportunities.

At the moment due to growing sales of drones and other remote controlled, semi-autonomous or fully autonomous systems the modern society is facing with the following main challenges in the same way it did at the beginning of automobile era early XX century:


  1. Lack of technical knowledge needed to properly control and maintain drones or other pilotless devices. This leads to fast decrease of the device values due to improper use and lost of money as well as lost of scarce resources used to produce the device.
  2. Lack of operation experience that leads to improper operation and fast loss of the device during the first operation experience, which leads to lost of the device as well as causes safety issues of surrounding objects and people. Unpleasant first experience might lead to reduced trust in technology and technology adoption level in general.
  3. Lack of legal experience of device operation meaning lack of knowledge of the applying legal acts and law. This leads to compromise of public safety and security due to possibility to violate existing regulations of International civil aviation regulations.
Thereby we see an obvious need for wide availability of comprehensive information sources (study material) about drones not only for the professionals but also for the general audience.

Activities:
O1: Autonomous systems module – teaching material for vocational schools concentrating on autonomy as phenomenon and related technologies that applies to different domains including Robotics, autonomous vehicles and others;
O2: Self-driving vehicles simulation modules – practical simulations-based teaching and learning material, including simulation software modules.
O3: Electric vehicle study platform – study material on electric drive systems, energy storage and recuperation, with focus on electric cars;
O4: Curriculum module on drones – study material on autonomous aircrafts with focus on multi-rotor aircrafts, their flight physics, aerodynamics aspects and Control specifics.
Partners:
  • Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech)
Project published on RTU website: 29.01.2020.

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