Saturday, December 23, 2017

RISE OF THE AUTO BOT - A sneak peek into the lab and minds behind India’s first autonomous cargo vehicle that is being made from scratch


It took more than a month for V Vinay to write algorithms for an autonomous cargo vehicle his company was building. The autonomy and control algorithms were a crucial milestone in its development. Vinay developed them as a set of mathematical rules that needed to be coded and tested on a computer, then on the vehicle. He called his senior colleagues for a presentation.

Vinay is a former professor of computer science at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and one of the early researchers in machine learning in India. Fifteen years ago, he had helped invent the Simputer, a hand-held computing device developed for rural India. Vinay set up Ati Technologies last year to develop autonomous vehicles, with two other cofounders. One of them was the 15-year-old Saad Nasser.
Nasser listened to Vinay as he presented his algorithms to a few key people in the company. The presentation was followed by a 30-minute discussion. While Vinay was explaining his ideas to his colleagues, Nasser was busy coding the algorithms. “It is working,” Nasser announced, as soon as Vinay finished his explanations.
Vinay had respect for Nasser’s intellectual abilities, but he was taken aback by the speed and sophistication of Nasser’s work. “It was not so simple,” says Vinay. “I was surprised that he could code so fast.”
Nasser also developed a simulation engine and tested the algorithms. Within a few weeks, the algorithms will be loaded on the small prototype cargo vehicle Ati Technologies has designed and developed. Next month, this will be road-tested on the campus of IISc. Ati will then build a commercial model, to be sold early in 2019.

FROM SQUARE ONE
“Most autonomous vehicle companies use existing vehicles,” says Saurabh Chandra, the third cofounder and the main funder of Ati. “It is like removing a horse and putting an engine on a horse cart. This is the horseless carriage era. Even the name is similar: the driverless car.”
Ati Technologies makes a departure from this practice by designing the cargo vehicle from scratch. “We don’t use the term driverless. We build the vehicle ground up for autonomy,” says Chandra. When built for a specific cargo vehicle market, a fresh design provides advantages — no need for airbags, steering wheels, doors or safety requirements for passengers. Ati wants the vehicle ultimately on public roads, but isolated campuses provide opportunity to test ideas while the government develops regulations.
Starting from scratch involves designing and developing many components — the chassis, motor, battery pack, composite material, autonomy and control algorithms. The vehicle, although small, is meant for carrying up to one tonne of cargo. So it had to be strong, with a small but powerful electric motor, something that was not readily available in the market. “It had to be one-fourth the size of a standard motor but had to deliver five times its power,” says Lukhman Khan, founder of Clarion Engineering Company, which is working with Ati to develop the motor. “It wasn’t easy to develop.”
There were other differences too, from standard motors. Ati would use an induction motor instead of a brushless DC motor mostly used in electric vehicles (EVs).
Ati did a battery pack design from scratch, also using novel ideas not usually found in EVs or elsewhere.

To begin with, its design team decided to use liquid cooling instead of air cooling because of its small size and power. “In summer, temperatures in north India go up to 45°C. Battery life will then reduce drastically.” Since it is cooled by a liquid, Ati’s battery pack will supposedly not have this problem.
The prototype motor is almost ready and will be used in the trial run in January. “We chose induction motors because they are more efficient over a wider speed range,” says Nasser. Even with a 1-tonne load, the vehicle will have a 60-km range.
The prototype is mainly for testing autonomy and control algorithms and has no serious limitation of weight. But a commercial model had to be light, at least 40% more than the prototype made of iron, and yet strong enough to carry 1 tonne. The material had to be inexpensive too. Ati teamed up with Zstrand, a company developing advanced composites. “The structure that supports load will be a novel composite,” says Gosakan Aravamudan, founder-CEO, Zstrand. “It will be a pathbreaking solution when developed.”

UNIQUE SELLING POINTS
Advanced composites are expected to play an important role in the development of EVs, and so offers Ati the option of spinning off a company manufacturing composites. The algorithms may have wider uses, and so probably can be part of a separate business later. The battery design is also unique and battery manufacturing can be part of a separate company too.
The vehicle has a tadpole configuration, with two wheels in the front and one at the back. It has no steering and turns because of the differential speeds of the two front wheels. This unique configuration will let it rotate full circle at one place, a tough thing to achieve with one tonnne of load.
The vehicle is sensor-rich, with Lidar, radar and four cameras, thus making it ideal for autonomous surveys. The powerful battery can supply refrigeration during transport. The Ati team had aimed at such versatility from the beginning. “Modern factory campuses are remarkably similar around the world,” says Chandra.
Ati Technologies has a 25-member design and development team, with specialists in many domains. Nasser is the glue that holds all of them together and so, functions as the unofficial chief technology officer. “Only Nasser knows the nuts and bolts of the vehicle,” quips Vinay. “It is locked up in his brain.”

Ati Technologies is now forming partnerships for future development. Chiranjib Bhattacharya, professor at the IISc computer science department, will help with further technology development in autonomy. Radhakant Padhi, professor at IISc aerospace engineering department, will help with control theory algorithms. All the development work has so far been done in Bengaluru. “The only expertise we did not find here was in software-related to autonomy,” says Vinay.


Source: THE ECONOMIC TIMES-21st December,2017