Solar-powered driverless bus developed by LPU students utilizing resources available within India

Lovely Professional University (LPU) has the vision to be a premier academic institution, recognized internationally for its contribution to industry and society through excellence in teaching, learning, research, internationalization, entrepreneurship and leadership.

The engineering students at LPU have designed and created a unique solar-powered driverless bus. With a maximum speed of 30 km per hour, it has a seating capacity of 10-30 persons, as per needs.

The bus is completely pollution free, and uses only renewable energy in form of electric motor and solar power for propulsion. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication has been used to make the bus driverless. It also uses GPS and Bluetooth for navigation, and could be controlled within a radius of 10 metres.

Dr. Sorabh Lakhanpal, Head, Student Welfare Wing, Lovely Professional University, and Mandeep Singh, Technical Head, Lovely Professional University, tell us more. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: What was the inspiration behind the invention of the solar-powered driverless bus?

Dr. Sorabh Lakhanpal: The idea was conceptualized around 2012 to make an electric vehicle and participate in an electric vehicle competition. Then, in 2014, students crafted an electrical mobile-operated golf kart and a fully solar-operated family car, both of whom were displayed at the Auto Expo 2014, along with many other concept cars.

With the evolution and advancement of technology such as artificial intelligence, Open CV, and the wide promotion of utilizing clean energy, our team looks forward to conceptualizing, redesigning, and developing a completely driverless, electric, and solar-powered bus. We required about 2-3 years to complete the project, while the upgrades are under process.

DQ: What revenue has been generated to date?

Dr. Sorabh Lakhanpal: As of now, we have been able to deliver a customized driverless bus within a range of Rs. 12-15 lakh as per customer requirements.

DQ: Over 300 students from the mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering departments of the university collaborated under the guidance of LPU professors and experts. Can you go through the process of the innovation?

Mandeep Singh: We shortlisted students from every domain who were really passionate, technically sound, and ready to work beyond hours. We started working with all the students on different aspects, began the developing and testing of all components and following that, a core group was formed.

Initially, the R&D led by LPU faculties and students carried out the necessary and potential analysis on areas such as board power cultivation, obstacle detection, and the necessary training of data to make the bus as reliable driverless.

The process was very simple -- the control system of the bus would take command from the microcontroller (MCU), which would further again be connected to the command unit through Wi-Fi, and would be able to take instructions from anywhere globally. In this way, the first laboratory testing of the prototype was done and by Dec 2019, it was ready for its first run.

The name of Faculties and students involved:
Project Head: Dr. Sorabh Lakhanpal, Head, Student Welfare Wing
Technical Head: Mandeep Singh
Students: Vishwa, Manoj, Simran, Yashi, Arshwinder Singh, Aditya, Kripa, Grace, Dhanush, Gaurav, Sri Ram, Tanishq, Yugam, and Varsha.

DQ: How it is inspiring Indian aspiring students under GoI's Make in India initiative?

Mandeep Singh: The GoI’s initiative, Make in India, encourages the Indian minds to use their full talent and potential to manufacture commodities, specifically techno-based ones within the country.

Our solar autonomous bus has been developed by our students by utilizing the resources available within the country. We see that our innovations are in full sync with the vision and outcome of the Make in India concept.

DQ: What is the USP of the innovation and how it is helping the environment?

Mandeep Singh: This innovation is different from other driverless vehicles in terms of its power source, which is solar energy that continuously charges the bus, whether it is being used or not, and thus, promotes a clean environment and zero carbon.

DQ: How has the solar-powered driverless bus to ferry grown since its entrance into commercial service, and what are the future expansion plans?

Dr. Sorabh Lakhanpal: Commercial expansion in terms of public transport is greatly influenced by various factors including the transportation infrastructure and the way it is changing and advancing. We are very positive, that soon we will be on Indian roads making our innovation available to the people. As of now, the driverless bus is ready to get deployed in areas such as airports, university campuses (like ours), resorts, and many similar places having larger campuses and controlled traffic.

DQ: As the product inception happened during LPU, how has the university helped?

Dr. Sorabh Lakhanpal: To make an idea into reality, especially an innovation like our driverless bus, we not only require a cluster of some curative young minds but also require support in terms of infra, funding, and other crucial liabilities. In this case, to support these young minds, the university has acted as a backbone of the project by providing funds and allocating the team with important resources to attain our objective.

So, in this case, we can say that without the support of the university (the backbone), it would have been impossible to bring this idea into reality.