The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and IT major Wipro Ltd have joined their hands to make a driverless, autonomous car for Indian road conditions which is said to be rollout in March 2020.

IISc & Wipro partnership will make an electric autonomous car

Driverless cars in Indian roads is impossible as it has a lot of traffic, damaged roads, behavior of people, accident rates and street animals, etc. However, in spite of all these hurdles, the IISc and Wipro decided to make a driverless car for India. This effort is meant to take both to the frontiers of new technology such as automation, robotics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and neuromorphic systems.

Autonomous car in India

The collaboration of one year and the three years of efforts to build the autonomous car at Wipro with the help of the data for roads in Europe and the US.

“grounds-up autonomous vehicle”

The efforts made at Wipro gave a result to an “a grounds-up autonomous vehicle” but the challenge now is to make such car for Indian roads say the IISc scientists and Wipro researchers who are working on the project.

Wipro’s head for AI, autonomous systems and robotics, 

Wipro’s head for AI, autonomous systems and robotics, Dr. Ramachandra Budihal said that “We are working on some cutting edge algorithms for Indian conditions. Earlier whatever we worked on was user data from Europe and America but we want to do something for India. We cannot use the systems that we built for the other data sets because the conditions here are unique.”

Dr. Ramachandra is based on the IISc campus with 18 members of the engineers’ team to build the car. Nearly 200 people from IISc and Wipro are involved in this project. 6 IISc departments such as electrical engineering, electrical communication engineering, electronic systems engineering, electronic design and technology, aerospace engineering, computer science, and automation.

Budihal said that they are not taking a Toyota or a Honda and retrofitting it but they are designing their own electric vehicle from scratch. After that, they will put all the systems inside. It is a concept autonomous vehicle.

“In Europe or the US, there is discipline, there is laned traffic. Here, nobody bothers — you have humans, cycles, autos going. If we have an autonomous vehicle in these conditions it has to take care of all these factors, plus the zero infrastructure, the potholes and the fact that everything is random,” said Prof A G Ramakrishnan from the department of electrical engineering at IISc, key investigators in the initiative.

The autonomous car with 28 sensors 

They are working on research algorithms which includes the special data, how and what additional things to be added such as sensors, etc. Scientists say they will equip about 28 sensors on the autonomous car.

Budihal says about neuromorphic technology that this innovation is going to be one of the early users of that technology.

Wipro will invest Rs.9.6 crore

Wipro will invest Rs.9.6 crore in collaborative research in cutting edge technology in fields like artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and human-machine interaction, autonomous systems, and robotics.

9 Startups in India working on self-driving technology 

There are 9 startups in India working on self-driving technology such as Flux Auto, Fisheybox, Hi-Tech Robotic Systemz, ATI Motors, Netradyne, Swaayatt Robots, Auro Robotics, Omnipresent Robot, SeDriCa 1.0

So, let us wait till March 2020 to see an autonomous car by the duo, IISC & Wipro partners. Hope their research and efforts will make a wonderful autonomous car which can be driven on Indian roads. 

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