Facilities and Equipment
Facilities &
Equipment
Our Equipment
To enable the research into connected and cooperative autonomous systems we have designed and developed many pieces of equipment and tools. We have our own autonomous capable research vehicle, our custom Mobile Road SideUnit and our own instrumented roundabout. We also have an autonomous vehicle platform to carry out research in the field of agriculture.
Catapult Open Innovation Vehicle Platform
The Catapult Open Innovation Vehicle Platform is an autonomous capable vehicle used to support research and development of Connected and Autonomous Vehicle products and services.
The platform is highly modular, enabling both software and hardware components to be substituted with ease to support the rapid development and testing of novel concepts.
The vehicle is fitted with a drive-by-wire system, plus a suite of sensing, communication and computing equipment.
This vehicle platform was funded and supported by WMG Centre High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult
How Catapult Open Innovation Vehicle Platform has made a difference
HI-DRIVE
Hi-Drive is a 60 million Euro EU flagship project with 53 partners across 13 countries. Started in July 2021, Hi-Drive project aims to advance the European state-of-the-art of automated driving from SAE L3 ‘Conditional Automation’ further up towards ‘High Automation’ by demonstrating in large-scale trials the robustness and reliability of Connected Automated Driving Functions (CADFs).
CARMA
The project focusses on unleashing the power of Edge and Cloud Computing, using a “connected roundabout” at the University of Warwick’s main campus.The Cloud Assisted Real-time Methods for Autonomy (CARMA) project, is part of the £11m TASCC programme funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Jaguar Land Rover.
Deployment of cooperative autonomous vehicles in Agritech
The project leverages capabilities from both Intelligent Vehicles and the Warwick Agritech Group, addressing some of the current challenges in the UK horticulture sector by developing a crop monitoring use case for an autonomous mobile robot (AMR)
Mobile Road Side Unit
The Mobile Road Side Unit is designed to be a mobile sensor node that can be pushed and parked at any location to collect sensor data. To facilitate this, the mobile RSU is fully equipped with onboard battery, sensors and computing equipment. Also, the IP-rated box, fan and heater provide much-needed weather protection and allows the equipment to be run at the most optimal condition. All of the equipment is designed to be modular to allow for the MRSU to be adapted to a multitude of test scenarios and use cases. This can be as small as moving an existing sensor to a new position to see if this has an effect on a testing algorithm or as large as installing a new sensor or computing platform.
There are various different use cases for the mobile RSU. To name a few:
- Park on the roadside to act as an infrastructure sensing (for example camera or LiDAR)
- Push the mobile RSU or park the mobile RSU at the roadside to act as another vehicle for co-operative autonomy testing
- Collect data in an office, where vehicles will not be able to get in
EDGE - Instrumented Roundabout
On the University of Warwick campus, we have instrumented a roundabout to have 8 CCTV cameras, V2X communication and edge computing to allow for the infrastructure to monitor the roundabout, apply algorithms on the data to obtain information about the environment and broadcast to nearby nodes, i.e. vehicles.
Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR)
Antobot have supplied us with a vehicle designed to operate in off road terrain in a variety of weather conditions, with a particular focus in the field of Agritech. Antobot is equipped with a custom compute platform and sensor suite that includes GNSS, LiDARs, cameras, and Ultrasonic sensors to facilitate autonomous navigation.
Antobot is a versatile platform that enables development and testing in a wide range of innovative initiatives:
- Adaptive Autonomous Towing for Mobile robots (AATOM)
- Advanced Crop Scouting
- Enhanced Perception, Localisation, Navigation and Control
- Cost-effective Sensor Solutions
The AMR and its associated projects have been funded and supported by WMG Centre High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult.
