Anadolu Isuzu transformed the 8-meter fully-electric Novociti Volt bus into a driverless vehicle platform as part of its collaboration with Leo Drive, to develop scalable and reliable software, hardware and algorithm solutions specific to autonomous driving technologies. The NovoCiti Volt test vehicle equipped with numerous advanced technology LiDAR cameras, sensors, special processors and controllers as well as connected driving systems, was tested through a wide range of scenarios, with and without passengers.
The data obtained from the test drives carried out on the Gebze Technical University campus were used to optimize the developed autonomous driving solution. Considered as a level 3 autonomous vehicle, Anadolu Isuzu states the NovoCiti Volt autonomous test vehicle demonstrated a safe driving ability in compliance with road signs and traffic lights in various traffic conditions, as well as with crossing pedestrians and vehicles in motion or stopping. The project is run in collaboration with the Autoware Foundation, a non-profit organization that aims to provide autonomous driving technology for everyone and supports open source-based solutions for it. Solutions developed with open-source technologies make the new generation medium size coaches and buses produced by Anadolu Isuzu ready for fully autonomous driving.
Established in 2015 and continuing its activities within YTU Yıldız Technopark, the Leo Drive initiative has recently received investment from the Japan-based autonomous vehicle technology company TIER IV. On the project, the TIER IV also effectively used its digital twin solution-based autonomous driving simulator (Scene Simulator for Autoware - AWSIM), developed as open source to build safe autonomous driving systems. Autoware has licensed self-driving vehicles on public roads in Japan since 2017. All high-definition maps, datasets, digital twin simulation records and system architectures in the test and development stages of the Autoware-based autonomous driving solution, successfully implemented by Anadolu Isuzu and Leo Drive, will be shared with the ecosystem of developers in this field as open-source.