Mumbai-based firm to launch AIoT-enabled driverless car next year. Details here

Mumbai-based automobile-as-a-service company - Autonomous Intelligence Motors Private Limited (AIMPL) - on Wednesday announced that it will launch an artificial intelligence-of-things (AIoT) powered autonomous car in the country next year. The driverless petrol and diesel hatchback variants will hit the Indian shores in March of 2022.

The first-of-its-kind AI-powered driverless car will be equipped with BS8-compliant engines for both petrol and diesel variants, besides electric variant. The fully autonomous cars will feature integrated custom sensors, cameras and radars while its perception system will use data sensed from multiple sensors and algorithms fitted in the car. The system will keep a track of road curvatures, potholes, routes and lanes.

The sensors fitted in the vehicle has the ability to identify innumerable obstacles such as emergency diversion, roadblocks, snarled-up traffic, foggy weather conditions, heavy rainfall. They can also identify flocks of scooters or taxis veering off lanes or autorickshaws halting abruptly in the middle of the street, and even hand-pulled carts in the middle of the roads.

With the help of the sensors, the driverless car can instantly identify an usual situation and also cover a distance of roughly 500 meters. The vehicle would be 50 per cent dependent on Google Maps and rest on the company's sensors.

The autonomous technology being used in AIMPL's driverless hatchback was first showcased back in 2014 by Computer Technology student Kushal TanajiShilimkar at the National Robotics Championship (NRC) held in IIT-Bombay. This is when Shilimkar sowed the first seeds of his full-stack driverless automobilestartup.

He first worked on a prototype and tested his AI-powered autonomous vehicle in a controlled environment at the NRC, where he artificially created all the basic road scenarios so as to assess the efficacy of the technology's pedestrian control system and collision avoidance system, among others.

Shilimkar's company is currently developing a safe and reliable autonomous driving technology for the Indian consumer. During autonomous road testing, the vehicle has accumulated several thousands of kilometers in complex scenarios. “It’s a matter of a couple of months before our driverless cars take everyone to work," he said.