For bachelor students, starting at TU Wien in the field of Informatics, there is a welcome event by the Faculty of Informatics to give an overview of research areas and activities by the various institutes and research units. As part of this Beginners’ Trail, there was also a presentation of autonomous driving and racing by the research unit Cyber-Physical Systems.
Various examples for Cyber-Physical Systems
Starting a bachelor study often means to start with basics in math, logic, programming, and much more. Regularly lecturers refer to their topics to be important later, when progressing further in the study. At this day, students were able to see various examples for Cyber-Physical Systems where such principles, that are taught in introductory courses, are actually applied. Current topics at the research unit of Cyber-Physical Systems include several ground and areal vehicles. For example, swarms of drones are used to find new methods of coordination and control for multi agent systems. Single larger drones are equipped with hard real-time embedded computing platforms to develop algorithms and computer architectures for such application areas. Rovers with multiple sensors are used to do research in the area of machine learning, perception and control.
Showcase of autonomous driving platform
Our racing cars were demonstrated as a quintessential example of cyber-physical systems. In the lab there was a live demonstration of the car, followed by an overview of the main components and current research topics. We could also show what it means to race at international competitions, and how the cars are used in the related lecture. We were happy to answer questions by the audience about our work and details of the cars and look forward to work with interested students in the future.
