India is Building Its Own Self-Driving Cars Equipped for Indian roads

A while ago, Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick jokingly said that India will be the last place on the planet to see the company’s self-driving cars on its roads. His reasons for the statement were simple; according to him, the driving patterns that road users and drivers or riders follow in the country aren't favourable for self-driving cars.

Prior to Kalanick's statement, Karl Iagnemma, nuTonomy’s CEO had echoed the same sentiments about India and self-driving cars. nuTonomy is a MIT startup that has recently decided to put self-driving cabs on the roads of Singapore.

While the world might be skeptic about the future of self-driving cars in the country, the youngsters in the country are focused on proving them wrong. Teams at the most prestigious institute in the country, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) are currently meticulously working on ‘autonomous vehicle solutions’ or driverless solutions of their own. The students are focused on developing the ideal technology for tackling Indian roads. The projects have reportedly already caught the attention of various leading Indian automotive companies.

The IIT teams are now gearing up to compete for the Rise Prize by Mahindra, which gives a chance to two teams to win a prize money of $1 mn for two projects, the Solar Challenge and the Driverless Car Challenge. The participating teams includes teams from IIT Kharagpur, IIT Kanpur and IIT Bombay, among many others.

The team at IIT Kharagpur is currently testing the autonomous vehicles that they have built from ground up within their campus. IIT Kanpur has plans similar to its Kharagpur counterpart. After their respective universities, the cars will be then tested on Indian roads.

The Mahindra Group’s Driverless Car Challenge has a total of 31 shortlisted teams that have to build a driverless car that will work not only work on civilised Western roads, but also work smoothly in tricky Indian traffic scenarios.

IIT Bombay and Kharagpur are also individually testing their technology on Mahindra’s electric car, Mahindra E2O. They plan to turn the car into a driverless car as part of the Mahindra RISE Prize Driverless Car Challenge.

While Uber and nuTonomy aren't sure about seeing their autonomous vehicles on Indian roads anytime soon, a recent survey conducted by Boston Consulting Group has revealed that as much as 85 percent of adult Indians are willing to ride in self-driving vehicles. So, let's see if the Indian institutes are able to realise this particular dream of the Indian citizens.

India is Building Its Own Self-Driving Cars Equipped for Indian roads

A while ago, Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick jokingly said that India will be the last place on the planet to see the company’s self-driving cars on its roads. His reasons for the statement were simple; according to him, the driving patterns that road users and drivers or riders follow in the country aren't favourable for self-driving cars.

Prior to Kalanick's statement, Karl Iagnemma, nuTonomy’s CEO had echoed the same sentiments about India and self-driving cars. nuTonomy is a MIT startup that has recently decided to put self-driving cabs on the roads of Singapore.

While the world might be skeptic about the future of self-driving cars in the country, the youngsters in the country are focused on proving them wrong. Teams at the most prestigious institute in the country, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) are currently meticulously working on ‘autonomous vehicle solutions’ or driverless solutions of their own. The students are focused on developing the ideal technology for tackling Indian roads. The projects have reportedly already caught the attention of various leading Indian automotive companies.

The IIT teams are now gearing up to compete for the Rise Prize by Mahindra, which gives a chance to two teams to win a prize money of $1 mn for two projects, the Solar Challenge and the Driverless Car Challenge. The participating teams includes teams from IIT Kharagpur, IIT Kanpur and IIT Bombay, among many others.

The team at IIT Kharagpur is currently testing the autonomous vehicles that they have built from ground up within their campus. IIT Kanpur has plans similar to its Kharagpur counterpart. After their respective universities, the cars will be then tested on Indian roads.

The Mahindra Group’s Driverless Car Challenge has a total of 31 shortlisted teams that have to build a driverless car that will work not only work on civilised Western roads, but also work smoothly in tricky Indian traffic scenarios.

IIT Bombay and Kharagpur are also individually testing their technology on Mahindra’s electric car, Mahindra E2O. They plan to turn the car into a driverless car as part of the Mahindra RISE Prize Driverless Car Challenge.

While Uber and nuTonomy aren't sure about seeing their autonomous vehicles on Indian roads anytime soon, a recent survey conducted by Boston Consulting Group has revealed that as much as 85 percent of adult Indians are willing to ride in self-driving vehicles. So, let's see if the Indian institutes are able to realise this particular dream of the Indian citizens.

Why Self-Driving Cars Won't Work In India

A while back, we reported about how a survey conducted by Boston Consulting Group has revealed that as much as 85 percent of adult Indians are willing to ride in self-driving vehicles. But, maybe India isn't yet to ready for Self-Driving cars after all.

nuTonomy, a MIT startup, had recently decided to put self-driving cabs on the roads of Singapore. Explaining why nuTonomy chose Singapore as its test market, Karl Iagnemma, nuTonomy's CEO, said, there are four main things to consider the most in case of self-driving cars: regulatory environment, driving climate, infrastructure and the weather. Of course, traffic density also plays an important rule, but that comes under driving climate. Further, a country might have dense traffic but if its people are adhering to the rules of the roads, it will be absolutely alright.



While Singaporeans are known to abide by the road rules, drivers in the Asian cities have a notorious reputation when it comes to navigating the roads. Iagnemma even used India as an example, which is known for its chaotic traffic.

So, the question that arises here is, if the driving climate of Singapore is perfect for self-driving vehicles — will the technology ever be able to successfully work in cities that don’t boost of a good infrastructure and law-abiding drivers?

India's capital city New Delhi's traffic situation is quite dense and it’s a more fluid driving environment, that makes it unfavourable for self-driving technology to deal with since the brains behind autonomous vehicles are computers, which function on a set of rules.

Since the technology behind self-driving is completely bound to an idea of structure, it becomes a little easier to deploy the technology in a structured environment — something which Singapore has.

This means, the less structure that the city offers, the more one will have to bank on human contextualized reasoning and decision making powers, and that makes it hard. One will have to drive based on their past experience and intuition. So, in order for Iagnemma's self-driving cars to work in India, while the core technology can be the same, but it still needs a more advanced evolution of the technology in order to be able to perform less structured contextualized reasoning.

Hence, the conclusion here is, Indian roads and drivers aren't currently ready for autonomous vehicles to function successfully. In order for them to become ready in the near future, the government will have to work meticulously towards improving the conditions of the Indian roads and its world-infamous traffic.

[Top Image- Techradar]