His name is Roshy John and he used to be the Practice Head at Tata Consultancy Services. One day while returning back from work, he took a cab for home. On his way he noticed that the driver was dozing off and lost control of vehicle multiple times. Eventually, he had to exchange seat with the driver and got home driving the cab himself. It was a minor incident but left a deep thought process in his mind which led him to the most historical decision of his life. He took some engineers under him and started working on a solution for this problem – A driverless Tata Nano.
Next, the team got themselves a brand new Tata Nano for transforming their idea into real life. They disintegrated the car completely and began modifying it one by one. The modifications were made for inclusion of actuators, sensors, and several other upgraded system that could help in making Tata Nano autonomous. The biggest challenge that they faced was the version they created needed an automatic transmission system while the car they had was equipped with manual gearbox. As a result, they were compelled to build a new automated manual transmission.
After organizing all components, they took the car for test drive. Roshy discovered a number of asphalt roads over some construction sites that were created for making buildings. These roads became their testing tracks. They kept modifying their algorithms until the desired results were achieved. The resulting system was one that could be installed in any car within 60 minutes. When the final test run was conducted, the team fixed a camera inside the car and some members recorded the drive from outside as well. The team members carefully noted the Nano’s logs while it was running on wireless network. It gave them freedom to abort the mission as and when anything went wrong. Along with this, the onboard person was also provided with an emergency switch that could bring the car to stop in case anything went wrong.
When Roshy jumped in front of the car, it stopped all by itself and this gave the team confidence to claim the safety of the world. As per them, this driverless Tata Nano drives way more safely than any human driver. If you wish to see for yourself you can always watch the video on YouTube. Roshy now plans to bring some more modifications in four-wheelers that would make driving trips easier for all. But we may have to wait a while for that.
