Vehicle software supplier Applied Intuition has unveiled its new off-road autonomy stack solution designed to safely navigate complex, unstructured terrains.
Navigating off-road environments presents challenges due to their dynamic and inconsistent nature, which can affect basic autonomous vehicle functions such as obstacle detection and avoidance. These environments pose safety risks and increase the cognitive load on operators.
While autonomous systems can enhance operational efficiency and productivity, they require sophisticated infrastructure and can be expensive and complex to develop and maintain, Applied Intuition says.
To address these challenges, the company has provided an off-road autonomy stack capable of operating on production hardware and navigating real-world environments. This technology was developed by specialists in machine learning and the demands of rugged terrains. The stack features modular components that can be integrated into customers’ robotic systems.
The autonomy stack includes simultaneous localization and mapping capabilities, enabling vehicles to navigate rough, unstructured and unmapped environments without relying on consistent or accurate GPS signals. It also features advanced perception and object tracking, for a real-time view of the surrounding environment, including semantic understanding and 3D geometric modeling of both static and dynamic objects.
Additionally, the stack uses sensor fusion and calibration, combining data from multiple sources with traditional geometric methods and advanced machine learning techniques. The planning and control systems are designed to ensure that vehicles follow safe and efficient paths, avoiding rollovers, entanglements and collisions. The company says these systems have proved effective across various vehicle types and models.
“As more industries look to adopt AV technology, we want our software to be at the forefront of off-road autonomy,” said Peter Ludwig, co-founder and CTO of Applied Intuition. “Our off-road stack combines the latest AI and ML advances with traditional safety and systems expertise to deliver state-of-the-art performance in the most challenging environments.”
Organizations can also use the off-road autonomy stack in conjunction with Applied Intuition’s ADAS/AD toolchain for simulation-driven development.