WATonoBus - All Weather Waterloo Autonomous Shuttle Bus: A Testbed for Automated Divining and V2X Connectivity

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In 2019, the Waterloo Mechatronic Vehicle Systems (MVS) Lab initiated the WATonoBus (https://uwaterloo.ca/watonobus/), Canada's first all-weather autonomous shuttle bus to safely drive autonomously in any weather condition on the UW's 2.7km Ring Road. WATonoBus is equipped with different sensors for perception and automated driving and, currently, four more shuttle buses are being instrumented to establish a fleet of five autonomous buses, a world-class testbed for autonomous urban driving research in Canada. Waterloo's Ring Road circles the UW campus, connecting our main buildings, parking lots, and bus and train stations. It has several intersections and crowded parts with pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles representing a unique test environment for research on autonomous driving in urban city environments. In this application, we request funding to equip one kilometer of Ring Road with stand-alone infrastructure sensor nodes to advance higher vehicle autonomy (Level 4 and 5) in complex urban driving. The addition of these sensor nodes to our WATonoBus fleet will establish the largest connected autonomous shuttle bus research test platform in any university in the world. Each of the infrastructure sensor nodes proposed in this RTI application will include a Lidar, camera, edge computing unit, 5G communication module, and a solar-based power unit. The sensor units will be mounted to the existing light posts on the Ring Road to provide the information needed for the automated driving of the shuttle buses. This has become possible through the recent Rogers Communications and the University of Waterloo partnership to create a 5G wireless network-enabled smart campus. The addition of these sensor nodes to the Ring Road and their integration into the WATonoBus fleet will enable urgently needed breakthroughs in reliable cooperative navigation through V2X connectivity (vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to infrastructure, vehicle to cloud, etc.), advance level 4 and 5 autonomous driving, and cloud-based operation of autonomous fleet through 5G network. All are crucial to realizing automated driving in city cores and high vehicle autonomy, and the competitiveness of Canada's automotive industry.