Autonomous Last Mile Shuttle ISEAUTO for Education and Research

Abstract

The article introduces an educational and research project ISEAUTO, targeted to using self-driving cars to solve urban mobility issues. The project focusses on the design and development of an autonomous shuttle as a collaboration between academic staff of the university, students, and a partner company. The article presents an account of the experience of developing vehicle from scratch in one year using a stock electric vehicle, widely available sensors and open source software. Technical solutions based on the latest trends in autonomous mobility are conferred, special attention is given to control and software architectures. In addition to reaching the goal of making the shuttle drive autonomously by the end of the first year of the project, it was possible to combine various tasks with teaching and award more than 460 ECTS to participating students. The project continues and a commercial version of the vehicle is in development.