The Lab

Vehicle

The most obvious piece of hardware that we utilize is our Lexus RX450h. It’s not your average SUV, however, as it is equipped with all the sensors that are a prerequisite for basic autonomy. The car and hardware were adapted by AutonomouStuff and everything is running on our in-house software.

Velodyne VLP-32C lidar

The long-range lidar helps to detect far-away obstacles, e.g., cars and pedestrians. The Velodyne VLP-32C has 32 lidar beams and has a detection range of about 80 meters. Ground removal and clustering is applied to extract obstacles from the point cloud. Alternatively, a special neural network can be used to detect other vehicles and pedestrians.

For some of the more tech-savvy amongst you, here is a list of all the major pieces of hardware and sensors that we use:

Ouster OS1-128 lidar

  • Vertical resolution: 128 channels
  • Horizontal resolution: 512, 1024, or 2048
  • Horizontal FOV: 360°
  • Horizontal angular resolution: min 0.17°
  • Vertical angular resolution: 0.35°
  • Range: 120 meters
  • Precision: ±0.7-5 cm
  • Frame rate: 10 or 20 Hz

Velodyne VLP-32C lidar

  • Vertical resolution: 32 channels
  • Horizontal resolution: 900-3600
  • Horizontal FOV: 360°
  • Vertical FOV: 40°
  • Horizontal angular resolution: 0.1°-0.4°
  • Vertical angular resolution: min 0.33°
  • Range: 200 meters
  • Precision: ±3 cm
  • Frame rate: 5 Hz to 20 Hz

2x Allied Vision Mako G-319C cameras

  • Resolution: 2064 × 1544
  • Max frame rate: 37.6 fps
  • Left camera FOV: 25.3°
  • Right camera FOV: 32.8°

NovAtel PwrPak7D-E2 GNSS device

  • Signal tracking: GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo
  • Accuracy: 1 cm + 1 ppm (in practice 5-10 cm)
  • INS rate: max 200 Hz
  • RTK service: ESTPOS

Aptiv’s multimode ESR 2.5 radar

Long-range
  • Range: 174 m
  • FOV: ±10°
  • Update rate: 50 ms
  • Range rate: -100-25 m/s
Mid-range
  • Range: 60 m
  • FOV: ±45°
  • Update rate: 50 ms
  • Range rate: -100-25 m/s

4x Sekonix cameras
(3x SF3324, 1x SF3325)

  • Resolution: 1928 x 1208
  • Max frame rate: 27 Hz
  • SF3324 FOV: 120°
  • SF3325 FOV: 60°

PACMod by-wire kit

  • Software control of steering, the throttle and the brake
  • Controllable over CAN bus
  • ROS drivers available

AStuff Spectra computer

  • CPU: Intel Xeon
  • Memory: 32GB
  • Storage: 1TB SSD
  • GPU: NVIDIA RTX2080Ti
  • Networking: 6x Gigabit Ethernet
  • OS: Ubuntu 18.04

NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Xavier computer

  • Two Xavier Systems-on-a-Chip
  • Deep Learning Accelerators
  • Built-in efficient video encoders and decoders
  • 16x GMSL camera ports (4 in use for Sekonix cameras)
  • 2 Ethernet ports
  • 6 CAN buses

Comma three devkit (dashcam)

  • Cameras: wide road-facing, narrow road-facing, driver-facing
  • Lane Keeping
  • Lane Departure Warning
  • Driver Monitoring
  • Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fi, GPS, CAN bus via OBD-C