The National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) through the Engineering Science Research Organization (OR IPT) is developing an environmentally friendly driverless mode of transportation, MEVi-TDS. Wow, will it compete with Elon Musk’s Tesla car?
MEVi-TDS stands for Micro Electric Vehicle-Teleoperated Driving System. By design, this vehicle is not as big as Tesla, but BRIN says that the MEVi-TDS is simply futuristic.
The development of electric vehicles was previously focused on mastering the technology of key components such as electric motors, batteries, control systems/power electronics, platforms and charging systems.
"While the National Research Priority (PRN) Electric Vehicles 2020-2024 focuses on mastering autonomous vehicle key technologies, such as object detection systems/sensors, telecommunication systems, human to vehicle interaction, computer vision, and so on," said the Head of Research Organization IPT BRIN, Budi Prawara in his press release.
The MEVi-TDC is designed as a vehicle with a single passenger capacity, where it will be a trend in the future, especially in urban areas.
"Globally, the electric vehicles of the future for urban areas are designed for one or two passengers. These vehicles are called micro electric vehicles," explained Haznan Abimanyu, Head of the Center for Electrical Power and Mechatronics.
Equipped with four LED lights on the front, oval -shaped brake lights on the back, as well as 6 LED lights forming a triangle as sein lights. At the top hood, added an amber rotator light that will light up as an alarm in the event of a failure of teleoperation.
This vehicle has a body dimension of 1,475 x 990 x 1,475 mm with a weight of about 80 kg. MEVi-TDS uses 8-inch wheels, 1,150 mm wheel axis with 70 mm ground clearance.
MEVi-TDS is equipped with a 48 volt 12 Ah lithium ion battery. Due to using only a 12 Ah battery, the maximum is driven around 46 minutes for use with a maximum speed of 10.88 km per hour.
BRIN said the battery capacity will be increased, but the maximum speed of the MEVi - TDS for now will not be increased because the vehicle is without a driver.
MeVi - TSD uses a BLDC motor (motorbrushless dc) 750 Watt, power 1 HP, torque 2.36 Nm capable of lifting loads up to 600 Kg. MEVi - TDS is also equipped with 6 ultrasonic sensors as distance sensors, IMU sensors to determine the orientation of the vehicle, GPS to know the exact position and 4 cameras that function as vision.
The control center as a data processor in MEVi - TDS uses Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier that will communicate with the workstation in the command station using WiFi AC network (IEEE 802.11ac). The telecommunication infrastructure topology used is a multihop wireless network topology.
On the command station side, some hardware is used to give command to the vehicle. By using a workstation equipped with a GPU that is used to process data transmission from the vehicle.
"In addition, it is also equipped with a simulator complete with a driving force wheel and uses 3 monitors that are supported by a free standing triple monitor stand," said Haznan.
In this autonomous vehicle research, the most crucial part is when researchers integrate mechanical or electrical systems with object detection systems based on LIDAR, RADAR or cameras, as well as telecommunication systems, so that they can function as autonomous vehicles.
Autonomous cars with single or double seater can be used in limited areas or special areas only, such as botanical gardens, tourist attractions, housing, industry, or offices.