Oxford Robotics Institute | Projects - V-Charge

The project V-Charge is based on the vision that, due to required drastic decrease of CO2 production and energy consumption, mobility will undergo important changes in the years to come. This includes new concepts for an optimal combination of public and individual transportation as well as the introduction of electrical cars that need coordinated recharging. A typical scenario of such a concept might be automatic drop-off and recovery of a car in front of a train station without taking care of parking or re-charging. Such new mobility concepts require among other technologies autonomous driving in designated areas.

The objective of this project is to develop a smart car system that allows for autonomous driving in designated areas (e.g. valet parking, park and ride) and can offer advanced driver support in urban environments. The final goal in four years is the demonstration and implementation of a fully operational future car system including autonomous local transportation, valet parking and battery charging on the campus of ETH Zurich and TU Braunschweig. The envisioned key contribution is the development safe and fully autonomous driving in city-like environments using only low-cost GPS, camera images, and ultrasonic sensors.

The VCharge Project is an EC funded project. For more information see the VCharge Website