I Car

Automated automobiles are coming soon. Remember the movie "Minority Report"? You may not see pods quite that sexy, but that is undeniably the inevitable future.

We at IIT Madras present you a glimpse of that future through the Spirit of Engineering project, iCar.

The primary objective of iCar is to automate a car by making it capable of detecting and avoiding obstacles, plan its motion and perform basic traffic manoeuvres. All this will be done onboard while the car is moving from a source to its destination, which can be decided by the user.

The eminent challenges in the project include, interfacing outputs of various modules: cameras, sensors, GPS, digital compass, optical encoder and of course making it decide and follow the right path.

Not to say the future implications of such an idea can lead to better cars in terms of road safety, fuel efficiency and of course the ultimate idea of vehicular automation – “to be able to ride a car without actually knowing how to drive a car”.

Therefore, we believe, that the “i” in iCar which stands for intelligence, innovation (Blah Blah…) will be proven to be quite apt in its place.

Hop on for the ride…