At the Canadian University in Dubai, a group of undergraduate engineering students have developed a solar-powered, self-driving vehicle. This vehicle’s primary usage was for travelling between City Walk’s two academic campuses.
22 final-year students from the university’s engineering, applied science, and technology departments worked on the design and creation of this solar automobile.
They divided into five teams, each of which concentrated on a different step in the process, such as designing the bodywork, choosing the materials, and developing the suspension system.
Advertisement
One of the major challenges, according to electrical engineering and mechatronics student Feras Usmani, was integrating all the systems into a working car.
He emphasized that the steering system and the central processing unit needed to be carefully synchronized. He ascribed the project’s success to the direction provided by their professors, the students’ productive teamwork, and their strong engineering abilities.
One team was in charge of the central processing system for the automobile, which served as the “brain” of the vehicle and processed data from the camera and Lidar system sensors.
The onboard electronics were the attention of another team. They made use of a rooftop photovoltaic panel to provide a 60-volt power source and charge the car’s battery.
Mechatronics student Malak Osama spoke on the benefits of working in diverse teams. She enjoyed working on the project and thinks it helped her develop her engineering and programming skills.
In the deployment of autonomous car technology, the UAE is a world leader. After extensive testing, Txai debuted an autonomous service in Abu Dhabi in December 2021.
By 2025, the Chinese company WeRide hopes to have hundreds of autonomous vehicles on UAE roads. A fleet of electric vehicles is currently scouting Dubai for potential autonomous vehicle locations. By the end of the year, ten driverless taxis are anticipated to be produced thanks to a cooperation between the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) and US company Cruise.