University of Western Australia
High school students in Carnarvon, Karratha and Newman might look twice this week, as a driverless bus glides around their campuses.
The University of Western Australia’s autonomous nUWAy Bus made the trip north on a tilt tray truck to feature in demonstrations and Q&A sessions at three Polly Farmer Foundation local high school Follow the Dream programs – Carnarvon Community College, St Luke’s College in Karratha and Newman Senior High School.
nUWAy was the culmination of 18 months of research led by Professor Thomas Bräunl and students from the UWA School of Engineering’s Renewable Energy Project.
“We acquired the shuttle bus as a shell without any software and engineering students added hardware extensions and a full software stack to operate the vehicle,” Professor Bräunl said.
“It is UWA’s third autonomous vehicle project, after a BMW X5 and an autonomous Formula-SAE race car, which places the University at the forefront of autonomous driving research.”
The bus is equipped with sensor systems to guide navigation and prevent collisions, including eight Lidars (a remote sensing method that uses lasers), two cameras, a GPS and an inertial measurement system.
An independent hardware system monitors the vehicle’s movements and automatically stops the bus if an object or person comes too close.
“It has unique characteristics in that while most commercial autonomous shuttles can only follow a fixed pre-programmed path and can’t deviate, nUWAy is able to drive around obstacles, where it is safe to do so,” Professor Bräunl said.
“The shuttle is a great testament to the students’ hard work and they learned a lot from the experience and we now want to share those learnings with students in the State’s north.
"We’d like them to include robotics into their STEM courses and our hope is that some of students will later enrol into UWA’s new Automation and Robotics Engineering Program."
Professor Thomas Bräunl, UWA
“We’d like them to include robotics into their STEM courses and our hope is that some of students will later enrol into UWA’s new Automation and Robotics Engineering Program.”
PhD student Kieran Quirke-Brown is leading a team of three UWA students on their field trip to the northern part of WA and said it was great to see the high school students enjoying themselves and asking questions.
“The teachers also mentioned how excited the older year groups were, which apparently never happens, so that was an added bonus to the day,” Mr Quirke-Brown said.
The trip was planned and funded by the Polly Farmer Foundation’s Follow the Dream program which provides academic enrichment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.