Cohda and Flinders University play with autonomous cars Friday, 11 December 2015

Australia isn’t known for its autonomous cars, but that could change following a test-run of a driverless car on a major freeway in South Australia, the first time an autonomous car has hit public roads here.

The Volvo XC90 was tested on the Southern Expressway, which was closed at the time.

The Google car has been in development since 2009, and since then, people have been questioning how far off a fully autonomous car is.

“I am confident that we’re going to have to see a lot of other technologies happen before the fully autonomous driverless vehicle actually comes about that will take you from your doorstep to your destination,” said Rocco Zito, head of Civil Engineering, School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics at Flinders University.

This includes developing the tools to allow cars to communicate with each other and also be able to talk to road infrastructure.

“We’ve already seen some of these technologies come out from an Adelaide-based company called Cohda Wireless that use a lot of dedicated short-range communications technologies,” Zito said.

“They’re actually involved in quite a few international trials looking at fitting their radios into vehicles that can actually talk to each other and talk to the road infrastructure as well.”

Cohda Wireless’ technology includes the V2X radar, a wireless sensor system that allows vehicles to share their sensor data. The technology uses a non-line-of-sight sensor with 360-degree awareness and can detect buildings and road signs.

But developing autonomous cars isn’t just about the vehicle’s technology – there is a host of associated infrastructure that also needs to be developed, such as road sensors.

However, the barriers to developing fully autonomous cars might not be in the technology, but in the cultural shift that is required.

“The technology is actually outpacing the law. At the moment, all our vehicle laws are written in such a way as where a driver is responsible for the actions of the vehicle. Obviously if you have an autonomous vehicle, that’s no longer the case,” Zito said.

“Into the future, it’s not a technology question anymore. It really is an acceptance and a change in the law that has to happen.”

In Australia, there are moves towards law changes, and in September this year, South Australia introduced the Motor Vehicles (Trials of Automotive Technologies) Amendment Bill. The Bill would provide for exemptions from existing laws to allow trials of automated vehicle technology on public roads.

Stephen Mullighan, South Australia’s Transport Minister, hopes the initiative will put the southern state at the forefront of a global industry that is said to be worth $90 billion in 15 years.

Autonomous cars are said to provide greater levels of safety than human-driven vehicles because of the technology that enables them to see more than humans. This technology includes sensor systems; forward and rear looking radar; camera systems providing vision of the surrounding environment; and GPS mapping data.

“There are a number of technologies that need to be fused together in some sort of architecture so all that information coming in can be processed and the right decisions are made by the vehicle to navigate safely,” Zito said.

There can also be challenges with integrating the systems.

“The trick is going to be in the system’s integration, where you have a number of sensors and some of the sensors would be providing redundancies and ensuring that you have that high level of safety that you need in automotive applications,” he said.

“It’s the integration of all that data to be able to make some meaningful information that is going to be the key part of the technology.”

Zito is looking into a trial at Flinders University to develop an autonomous bus that could link the university’s two campuses, as well as a trial to link the new Tonsley campus, which will house 1000 residents, with other locations.

Flinders University is also sponsoring the World Solar Challenge, and Zito is hoping that in 2017, it will also develop a solar autonomous vehicle could drive from Darwin to Adelaide.

Zito said part of that challenge will include working out how much energy the bus will need, what size bus it can build according to the batteries it uses, what sensors to use and whether the university can build an autonomous test track.

“So there are a number of challenges that we have to try and get over before that public transport application can happen,” he said.

“If we could get an autonomous bus link in the next year or two to coincide with our 2017 World Solar Challenge event, I think we would be going really well.”