Indian Institute of Technology to develop driverless cars
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) are developing autonomous vehicles and technology capable of navigating the country's rugged and chaotic roads. Students at IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur are testing autonomous vehicles constructed on their own campuses, while IIT Bombay is testing lidar sensor technology on the Mahindra E2O. "India is a complex market and creating solutions in absence of adequate infrastructure and civic sense needed for driverless vehicles becomes even more challenging," IIT Bombay's Ankit Sharma said. "If we can have a solution that can work in India, it will undoubtedly work anywhere in the world." 

NEW DELHI: Indian technologists do not appear slowcoaches behind Uber and Google in the global race to develop self-driving cars, with three top schools harnessing engineering talent to build solutions for the rugged and chaotic roads in the South Asian nation.Teams at the Indian Institute of Technology ( IIT ) in Kharagpur, Kanpur and Bombay — now household names in Silicon Valley companies — are working on ‘autonomous vehicle solutions’ or driverless solutions, a project evoking interest from Indian automotive companies.“We are developing technology for driverless cars keeping the Indian market in mind, in contrast to the global tech majors who are building and testing technologies in the Western market,” IIT Kharagpur’s Debashish Chakravarty, head of the autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) project, told ET.IITs ET spoke to did not disclose the names of companies due to confidentiality agreements, although campus sources said all major auto companies were working with the three institutes. ET reported last week that the federal government was planning amendments to motor vehicle laws to allow testing of driverless vehicles, paving the road for local companies to join the global race.Globally, Tesla is already testing out autonomous vehicles, while Google and Uber have also made successful attempts.Students at IIT Kharagpur are currently testing autonomous vehicles built from scratch within their campus. IIT Kanpur, too, has plans to build its own autonomous vehicle, according to Gaurav Pandey who left his job in the autonomous vehicle research group at the US-based Ford Motor Company to join IIT Kanpur as a faculty in 2015.“India is a complex market and creating solutions in absence of adequate infrastructure and civic sense needed for driverless vehicles becomes even more challenging,” said IIT Bombay’s Ankit Sharma, who is leading a team of students on the driverless technology. “If we can have a solution that can work in India, it will undoubtedly work anywhere in the world,” said Sharma. IIT Bombay students, too, are running the pilot testing of the autonomous vehicle within the campus.According to Tim Leverton, head — Engineering at Tata Motors, fully-autonomous cars are expected to be commercially available in the developed markets by 2025. “Looking at this shift in trend, global automakers are very keen on making their impression in the autonomous industry and it is imperative for Indian car makers to understand and incorporate this technology too, in order to remain relevant in the current market scenario,” Leverton said.Each of the IITs is also individually designing a prototype vehicle using 3D laser sensor lidar to aid advanced road detection, which is critical to autonomous vehicle. “This car is built from scratch at the institute with only sensors being outsourced. The algorithm or the brain of the car is being developed by us,” said Sharma.IIT Bombay and Kharagpur are also individually testing this technology on Mahindra’s E2O ( electric car ) to turn it into a driverless car as part of Mahindra RISE Prize Driverless Car Challenge. “There is a lot of action at the IITs in the autonomous vehicle solutions space. Most auto companies are watching this space closely,” said Sirish Batchu, head of Infotronics Technology and Advance Electronics at Mahindra Research Valley. Continental is supporting two projects by IIT Bombay, the Mahindra E2O driverless car challenge and Intelligent Ground Vehicle Challenge (IGVC), through sponsorships.“At this point, Continental is extending sponsorship support. However, as and when the project requires technology expertise, Continental would be open to supporting the team,” a Continental spokesman said in an e-mail. “Being one of the front runners in the area of automated driving, Continental is steering the future of mobility not just within the automotive industry but also nurturing the talent pool that is critical to achieving our vision of fully automated driving.”