AIT demonstrates Thailand’s first unmanned intelligent vehicle

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Thailand's first unmanned intelligent vehicle was successfully demonstrated at AIT campus on Wednesday 29 November 2006 after a press conference on Thailand Intelligent Vehicle Challenge (TIVC), jointly organized by AIT, Thai Robotics Society (TRS), and Seagate Technology (Thailand) Ltd. The Intelligent Vehicle Challenge is a competition of unmanned vehicles which have to drive automatically in a selected road. The vehicles must be capable of avoiding obstacles and following traffic signs.

The demonstration showed a prototype unmanned intelligent vehicle developed by AIT’s Mechatronics field of study, School of Engineering and Technolgoy. The vehicle tracked on straight and s-curve roads from the AIT cafeteria junction to the playground in front of ST4.

The vehicle is a golf car donated by Tiger Company. It is equipped with a digital camera in the front which spots the border line in the middle of the road and then send the processed data about relative position and orientation of the vehicle respect to the road to a computer note book at the back of the car. The Machine Vision system was developed to control the car’s movement and direction by automatically directing the car whether it should turn left, turn right, or stop, depending on the condition of the road.

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According to Dr. Manukid Parnichkun, project leader, this prototype of intelligent vehicle can run with 3.6 km/hr, which is still far from the target speed of 60 km/h. It will be further equipped with various forms of sensors such as sonar, and laser sensors to monitor obstacles, and GPS to monitor its latitude and longitude position in order to be used along with regular vehicles in normal road in the future.

The project is a joint cooperation among several institutions, especially universities. The support is being sought from National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), National Metal and Materials Technology Center (MTEC) and Reverse Brain Drain project (RBD) with the research and development budget of 27 million baht.

The press conference on Thailand Intelligent Vehicle Challenge was presided over by Dr. Prabhas Chongstitvatana, president of the Thai Robotics Society; Dr. Pornchai Piemsomboon, Seagate’s senior vice president of Asia Manufacturing Operations; Prof. Worsak Kanok-Nukulchai, dean of SET; and Dr. Manukid, who is chairman of the organizing committee of the contest.

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In his welcome message at the press conference , Prof. Worsak said the contest is one of the activities that initiates Thai students to be creative by opening to all students to seek any kinds of technology to build an intelligent robot to become an unmanned vehicle.

“I would like to congratulate Thai Robotics Society that has a good creative initiation and I hope that AIT, an educational institute supported by the Royal Thai Government, is more than willing to encourage the Thai students to participate in this contest. If any of these participating students would like to further their studies at AIT, the institute will make the best effort to look for the scholarships to support them,” he added.

“One of our objectives of this contest is to develop the creativity and expertise of our young in the field of robotic technology, automatic systems and automotive applications. As this is the first contest of its kind, we had to be creative in stimulating our young innovators’ interests and encouraging them to increase their knowledge in the fields related to the contest,” Dr. Prabhas said. 

He added that the Thai Robotics Society was thankful for the sponsorship of more than 2.8 million baht from Seagate Technology. “Seagate’s generous sponsorship reflects its recognition of the importance of developing technology skills among today’s students in order to prepare them for the challenges of tomorrow.”

The contest requires students to develop an unmanned intelligent vehicle by using any steering engines, such as internal combustion engine, electrical engine, or hybrid engine. Points will be given based on the highest speed and the longest distance that the vehicle can travel. The winning team will receive a cash prize of 200,000 baht and will have the opportunity to observe the Urban Challenge in the United States next year.

“Seagate’s sponsorship of Thailand’s Intelligent Vehicle Challenge underlines our commitment to support science and technology development. This contest offers students a platform to explore, create and learn from one another in a very quick and effective way,” said Dr. Pornchai.

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Dr. Manukid said AIT is proud to host this inaugural competition. “The institute has coordinated with other universities in developing courses to drive the government’s vision in making Thailand the center of robotic engineering innovation.”  He added that interested applicants may apply, then a workshop would be organized to train all the applicants on how to make unmanned intelligent vehicle . The preliminary round will be held in March 2007; the final round in May 2007.

Applicants may download the application forms and search for more information about rules and regulations at http://www.ise.ait.ac.th/TIVChallenge/index.htm or http://www.trs.or.th

The press conference was attended by nearly 30 media outlets including Thai TV Channels 7, 9, 11 and ASTV, which broadcasted the event on the evening news the next day. Coverage of the event in the Manager (30 November), Krungthep Turakij (30 November), Thaipost (1 December), and Daily News (4 December) newspapers is available online at:

http://www.manager.co.th/Science/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=9490000147410

http://www.bangkokbiznews.com/level3/news_136732.jsp

http://www.thaipost.net/index.asp?bk=xcite&post_date=1/Dec/2549&news_id=134144&cat_id=200100

http://www.dailynews.co.th/dailynews/pages/front_th/popup_news/Default.aspx?newsid=109551&newsType=1&template=1

For more information, please contact pssu@ait.ac.th