Tata Elxsi and AEye demonstrate a Fully Autonomous Vehicle, RoboTaxi

Tata Elxsi has announced the completion of its in-house autonomous Artificial Intelligence-based Taxi.

The driverless car is known by the name, RoboTaxi, which has been built in partnership with AEye, an advanced Artificial Vision hardware provider.

The concept vehicle was developed with the help of AEye’s iDAR platform and Tata Elxsi autonomous stack. iDAR is a perception based AI system that acts as the eyes and visual cortex of autonomous vehicles. It is said to be a smart sensor that improves reliability and range of detection.

Executive Opinion

VP of AI and software at AEye, Abhijit Thatte, said, "Tata Elxsi has been a wonderful development partner, helping us to extend the software capabilities of the iDAR platform and integrate iDAR into a fully realized autonomous driving stack. Building an autonomous reference system from the ground up, based on iDAR as the artificial perception platform, is a fantastic achievement for the AEye and Tata Elxsi’s AD/ADAS team. We are excited to be demonstrating some of the unique capabilities of iDAR and how they can accelerate the deployment of autonomous features in vehicles."

General Manager & Head of Transportation Business Unit, Tata Elxsi, Shaju S, said, "iDAR is a powerful perception platform, and it has been an exceptional opportunity to work with iDAR and the AEye team to realize our shared vision of how to implement autonomous driving. We look forward to continuing to work together to deliver exciting new capabilities in 2020."

Tata Elxsi's Autonomous Vehicle, RoboTaxi

Tata Elxsi leverages its middleware platform, Autonomai, to conceptualize the RoboTaxi feature. According to Tata Elxsi, the Autonomai supports sensor fusion with a variety of sensors from cameras to Radar and Lidar. For driverless car use cases, the solution further leverages sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning-based algorithms.

Tata Elxsi is responsible for the iDAR integration into the vehicle, for working together with the simulation, demonstration stack, and vehicle testing for AEye, notes the announcement.
The RoboTaxi vehicle has been built to tackle various other scenarios, such as cross-traffic detection, following the road ahead, and cueing the sensor with high-resolution maps and V2X (Vehicle to Everything) information.

The advanced RoboTaxi software framework will be demonstrated at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas from 7th – 10th of January, the announcement notes.