Self-Driving cars are all the rage these days. Google is making them, BMW is on it, Tesla has launched one, Ford is coming up and several others are jumping on the bandwagon. Matching these large enterprises and conglomerates, Pakistani students have developed their own self-driving car.
Students from Mirpur University of Science and Information Technology’s (MUST) CS & IT department have developed a self-driving car under the leadership of Professor Dr. Muaz Niazi and Assistant Professor Faisal Riaz. The project was undertaken under the banner of Intelligent Transport Lab, MUST.
EMO – Prototype
The developers are calling it EMO and it’s the first prototype developed over a period of 2 and a half years at a cost of Rs. 0.6 million. The team claims they had to receive funding from several sources including their own university and the students and staff also had to invest their own money in the project.
The car was showcased at the MUST Olympiad 2017 and was inaugurated by the famous Atomic Scientist Dr. Samar Mubarak. The scientist hopes that this car can go mainstream and car companies invest in this car technology.
EMO is actually an acronym for the dual-seater car and stands for Emotions Enabled Autonomous Vehicle. The research teams says that unlike others developing autonomous cars, their car uses a human inspired design allowing the car to make cognitive decisions based on emotional cues.
The prototype is already running and the team claims it has the following features to boot:
- Google Maps based mapping system. Also used to drive the car around
- Car control using an attached tablet
- Passenger Communication System
- 360 degree Field of View using long and short range sonars
- Emotions Inspired Collision Avoidance
- Vehicle-2-Infrastrure Communication
- Vehicle-2-Vehicle Communication System
- Auto-Accident Reporting
The car’s hardware was designed locally and internationally while its software has been coded at ITS lab. The team plans to incorporate security features into the car as well.
Promo Video
The car’s promo video has been released by the research team. Take a look at the video below to see the car in action:
Research Team
The research team, under the guidance of Professor Dr. Muaz Niazi and Assistant Professor Faisal Riaz, behind the project comprised of 12 students.
Final Words
We would like to congratulate the team on this marvelous feat considering the lack of resources and funding. Matching up with international giants is a feat in itself. This also goes on to show the potential of Pakistani students when they are assisted by the right individuals and given a proper platform.
While the car is still just a prototype and lacks some major components which prevent it from being road legal, we certainly hope the team can continue the work and launch a final project ready for Pakistani roads. Let’s hope these cars become the norm so that accidents become a distant memory.
Good One
Sochany waly sochty reh gaye aur ap logo nay kr dikhaya WELDON MUST TEAM :)
Congrats team for this successful project, May Allah help you accomplish more goals in your life. Really made Pakistan proud by developing this project :)
Great and congrats. But whats wrong with image quality?
We Appreciate your hardworking on this project.
the shape could have been better… its a self driving buggy .. will help you collect all your golf balls with ease
1. Absolutely fantastic work guys! Its a very good project and effort. The implementation with 3 sonars at the moment is a bit less as it is not at all a reliable sensor for a ‘Autonomous Vehicle’. I would highly recommend you going for the cheaper 2-D Lidars like Sweep (by Scanse – http://scanse.io/) or Lidar LITE (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14032) which will easily fall within your budget and provide proper 360 degree view, instead of just 3 front mounted sonars. Also, is the OCC model a visual representation of the confidence level or are you just using the thresholded values of the sonars for showing what the car sees (because it looks like the latter from the video). Some more details and link to the research papers that you are publishing will be great!
2. That being said; as pakistani engineering students, we tend to over-advertise what our projects are. So i would like to humbly request that kindly correct the nomenclature of the project. It is not by any means an ‘Autonomous Vehicle’. The criteria for an ‘Autonomous vehicle’ per say is at a minimum proper 3D Fov with intelligent object detection and Real time path planning for starters. You can also look into the Comma.ai code at github as inspiration from a much advanced version of your project (y). These require much more complicated systems, sensors as well as algorithms; so (with all due respect) please know that your project is a Very Good design and implementation of a Semi-Autonomous vehicle and not a Fully Autonomous one. By no means am i criticising your effort as i know how hard it is to develop these projects. And i hope there are next advanced designs already in progress.
3. @ProPakistani Writers Specifically:
The team named their project an Autonomous Vehicle, and not a Self-Driving car. Words mean a lot (which you should know as you are in the news business) so these are two different things. Do not over-extend what you want to write about and make false claims. And if you have lack of knowledge about writing something, please consult someone relevant. This is a general request, not particular only to this post but quite a few others aswell. Just to get more hits, you are misleading as this will be taken as a Joke if you compare with the world. So please hold your horses while writing your headlines.
Best of luck to the MUST team!
Thanks for your encouraging comments. We are already working on version 2 enabled with Lidar. Thanks for your feedback and helping links. Nice of you.
No problem at all! Would be glad to help in any way i can :) Keep up the good work!
Thank you very much, Sir.
Congratulation to entire team, really it is an awesome progress and time is not for when it will be developed commercially in Pakistan.