Bengaluru Techie Makes India’s First Driverless Car With Tata Nano

An autonomous vehicle or self-driving cars are no longer a science fiction India,  as this technology is already being tested on the roads. And now the news is rife that Bengaluru-based techie Roshy John, who is practice head, robotics, and cognitive systems at TCS, along with his team is developing India's first driverless car.

According to Roshy's blog on YouTube, it was Roshy who witnessed a near-death experience while returning to home from airport in a taxi as the driver was sleepy. John then made the drive sit in the rear seat and took the steering wheel in his hands to drive home safely. And that was the time when he thought of inventing an autonomous vehicle within his capabilities.

In his blog post, Roshy said that he had no clue from where to start. And five years later, "I selected Tata Nano because it is a rear engine vehicle, it has so much of place for sensors and actuators, and it is a cute little car," he added.

As per a report that appeared in Times of India, John purchased a Nano to test the software in 2011. Daimler, Nissan, General Motors, BMW, Google, and Tesla are investing big bucks in developing driverless cars across the world.

John along with his 29-member team worked on the software and algorithms in their free time and created a 3D model to test it. Creating an algorithm using a custom cluster (multiple computers), the team were able to read all parameters of the engine.

The car is also equipped with wheel encoders to measure the speed of the wheel, multiple lidars to identify obstacles around the car, HDR cameras, and GPS. The data was processed by the software to make the car 'drive' like a human. Apart from this, pedal robots have been attached to the accelerator, brake, and clutch and connected them to the software.

And once John will receive permission from the traffic police, this autonomous Tata Nano car will be tested on Indian roads.

Tesla Motors To Enter Indian Market with Model 3, In This Summer 2017

US-based electric car major Tesla plans to enter the Indian market during this summer, according to company's Chief Executive Elon Musk.

"Hoping for summer this year," Musk tweeted in a reply to a query on by when Tesla could launch its vehicles in India.

Last year in April, the company had stated that it planned to enter India with its Model 3 in 2017 while it began global rollout of the vehicle in late 2016.

Model 3 is Tesla's most affordable car yet and achieves 215 miles of range per charge while starting at $35,000 before incentives. The company's others models include Model S and Model X.

In a visit to the company's plant last year, Minister of Road, Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari had offered Tesla land near major Indian ports to facilitate exports to South and South East Asian countries while asking the company to make India its Asia manufacturing hub.

In September 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited Tesla's facility in San Jose and showed the keen interest in some of their path breaking inventions, particularly in the renewable energy sector which can have multiple applications in remote rural areas.

In 2014, Tesla had said it was keen to enter the Indian market and even identified the country as one of the possible locations to set up a manufacturing plant in Asia.

It, however, said high duty on imported vehicles and lack of a separate category for electric cars prevented it from selling vehicles here despite having a huge potential.