Finally - Preliminary Testing of Rural Autonomous Driving

A mysterious unnamed contributor writes:

U of Iowa has started testing an autonomous vehicle under rural conditions--long routes, roads with no lane markings, snow/ice, and eventually gravel roads as well (in a later phase). This link includes a summary of their work during the first year of the project, https://autonomoustuff.com/velocity-magazine/velocity-2022/on-the-rural-road-to-autonomy The study was, "initiated by the University of Iowa's National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS) transportation safety research center and funded by a $7 million USD grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT)..."

In true big-Federal-budget style, they have commissioned and built a test vehicle into a Ford Transit 350HD with every known (to me) autonomous sensor and buzz-word technology:

The Customized Research & Development Platform includes:

PACMod by-wire kit
AStuff Spectra rugged GPU computing edge AI platform
AStuff Spectra 2 rugged dual-GPU computing edge AI platform
Multiple Continental ARS 408-21 RADARs
Hexagon | NovAtel PwrPak7D-E2 with dual VEXXIS GNSS-502 antennas
Mobileye Camera Development Kit (includes lane modelling, lane type, obstacle detection, obstacle classification, pedestrian detection, application warnings, traffic sign recognition)
Multiple Velodyne Puck and Velodyne Puck Hi-res LiDAR sensors
Cohda Wireless MK5 OBU communication solution for receiving smart infrastructure vehicle-to-everything (V2X) data
Multiple Leopard imaging cameras for traffic light detection
Stand-alone data logger for redundant data acquisition

The technology stack, including power distribution, high-speed ethernet switches, two computers (one for LiDAR and RADAR perception processing and classification, one for the autonomy system), data loggers and the communication system, sits in the cowl panel of the vehicle. The sensors are positioned per Figure 1.

Once AutonomouStuff delivered the equipped vehicle, the UI team added more sensors to monitor the weather and for the physiological assessments. UI and AutonomouStuff completed the initial development and testing of the ADS Transit vehicle in early 2021.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.