Development Case Study of the First Estonian Self-Driving Car, ISEAUTO

The rapid development of intelligent control technology has also brought about changes in the automotive industry and led to development of autonomous or self-driving vehicles. To overcome traffic and environment issues, self-driving cars use a number of sensors for vision as well as a navigation system and actuators to control mechanical systems and computers to process the data. All these points make a self-driving car an interdisciplinary project that requires contribution from different fields. In our particular case, four different university departments and two companies are directly involved in the selfdriving car project. The main aim of the paper is to discuss the challenges faced in the development of the first Estonian selfdriving car. The project implementation time was 20 months and the project included four work packages: preliminary study, software development, body assembly and system tuning/testing of the self-driving car. This paper describes the development process stages and tasks that were distributed between the sub-teams. Moreover, the paper presents the technical and software solutions that were used to achieve the goal and presents a self-driving lastmile bus called ISEAUTO. Special attention is paid to the discussion of safety challenges that a self-driving electrical car project can encounter. The main outcomes and future research possibilities are outlined.