The objective of minimizing casualties in battle fields, or saving lives from car accidents, has always been on top of the agenda not only in military intervention but also in land transportation. Despite many consolidated efforts such as the Eureka-PROMETHEUS project in Europe and the PATH project in USA, no one has achieved a definite solution. Therefore, the development of autonomous and intelligent land vehicles is still a strategically-important goal, which is worth pursuing. And, the DARPA¡¯s Grand Challenge (GC) on Autonomous Robotic Vehicles should be seen as a catalyst, which will certainly encourage a new round of world-wide effort towards achieving such an ambitious goal.
This research program is to investigate the design, analysis, control, guidance, navigation, and autonomy in decision-making and action-taking of intelligent vehicles in land, which could help achieve:
- Driving assistance
- Autonomous driving
- Unmanned transportation of goods or supplies
Today, it poses no major concern in achieving design, analysis, simulation, and automated control of vehicular motions or movements. In other words, it is not a problem at all to develop an intelligent vehicle having very powerful physical capabilities. However, it is still a challenge to develop machine intelligence, which could enable an intelligent vehicle to possess very powerful mental capabilities for crucial tasks such as perception, planning, learning, decision-making, and human-like interaction, etc. As a consolidated effort towards achieving a fully autonomous & intelligent vehicle, it is important to address both the issues of critical research and the issues of important development. For instance, the critical areas of research should include:
1. Cognition (to gain the awareness of inner and outer worlds from signals)
2. Cooperation (to achieve a common mission with a fleet of autonomous & intelligent vehicles)
And, the important aspects of development should include:
1. Control (to design and alter the dynamic responses of an intelligent vehicle)
2. Computing (to achieve real-time responses for sensing, control, perception, and decision-making, etc)
3. Communication (to interface and gain access to information which are critical to the achievement of intended missions)
2007
1997
Singapore:
(to come)
Overseas:
Tongji University
Tsinghua University
Huazhong University of Scinece and Technology
Fudan University
Michigan State University
University of Science and Technology of Lille
Italian Institute of Technology
Kumamoto University
Tel:
(+65) 6790 5754
Email:
ming.xie@robotics.sg
Intelligent Vehicle (to come) Fundamentals of Robotics Automation e-Expo
