Overview
Autonomy, in the context of autonomous vehicles, is the ability of a vehicle to operate without the intervention of a human operator. Such vehicles constitute a very broad spectrum of shapes and sizes including, for instance, vacuum cleaning robots, automated guided vehicles (AGVs) operating on factory floors and warehouses, and robot taxis etc.
The objective of the course is to give students knowledge in the area of autonomous vehicles, by participating in an autonomous-vehicles project. This can either be an applied or a research project in the field of autonomous vehicles.
The course is a two-part course i.e. 3+3 ECTS, in two semesters.
Information about project types
The student is (in small teams, or independently) expected to work on the applied/research project agreed-upon with supervisor.
The projects can be of several types, for example:
1. The students can take up a research or applied project in different sub-areas of autonomous driving, such as localization, behaviour modeling and prediction, road-user interaction, and mapping etc.
2. The students can take up a research or applied project using the DonkeyCar 1:10 scale platfrom. The same platform can also be used for developing and testing projects for a small-scale autonomous-vehicle toy city, for example traffic sign or traffic light detection. Alternatively, one can work in simulation or on a static dataset without actually trying anything in the real world.
The DonkeyCar platform
So far these cars have been made to: avoid obstacles, follow "direction of traffic" sign, stop at stop sign, stop at the pedestrian crossing if a Lego man is on it, give way for a vehicle on the right, etc (see some videos here). All of these will be combined in the ADL Minicar Challenge 2024 (https://adl.cs.ut.ee/teaching/minicar-challenge).
Deliverables
The assessment is based on an intermediate and final presentations, mid-term and final reports, (and where applicable) demonstration and code.
Contact
Naveed Muhammad (naveed.muhammad@ut.ee)
Ardi Tampuu (ardi.tampuu@ut.ee)