DEMO4 - AMASE2RC

What does the autonomous car do? Driving decisions made by autonomous vehicles are often the result of highly complex and largely invisible algorithms. However, especially when developing these algorithms, it is helpful to test the software early on on the "real" system: the car. Since testing with a life-sized autonomous vehicle can be expensive and dangerous, smaller robot cars are ideal for this purpose. Interesting properties that need to be examined include freedom from collisions, fairness and efficiency of autonomous vehicles.

Aim

This project uses robot cars to make the topic of autonomous driving understandable and tangible to a wider audience. With the robot cars, complex algorithms can become visible, for example for a car that should reach a destination as quickly as possible but at the same time without an accident. This project represents a low-threshold offer that makes research activities in the topic of future mobility accessible to schoolchildren, students and the general public. With a modular system, vehicles can be assembled themselves and expanded with sensors and motors in a variety of ways, so that an understanding of hardware components such as lidar or distance sensors can also be achieved.

The demonstrator

• Development, testing and optimization of algorithms for autonomous driving maneuvers
• A selection of different sensors and actuators enables the modeling of a wide range of problems (e.g. a microphone offers reaction options to audio signals like a siren to investigate spontaneous evasive maneuvers)
• The systems already provide their own software environments that are also suitable for those with no programming experience, ensuring low-threshold and versatile use.
• For more experienced students, hardware-related programming with Python is possible.

Benefit

Students and interested individuals of all ages will inspired for the ICM's research topics in the field of mobility and in the group of junior professor Maike Schwammberger. By appearing at events such as Girls Day, we can reach female prospective students in particular and thus help ensure that the dramatically low number of female students in computer science study programs also develops positively. Through project leader junior professor Maike Schwammberger, as well as the two female student assistants involved in conducting workshops in this project, we, as role models, live out the attractiveness of studying computer science for female and interested students.