Early this summer, a bunch of IIT-graduates and their superiors were sweating it out in the outer reaches of Gurugram, swindling with their laptops to standardize sensors as they get ready for one more round of verifying a completely driverless transport.
The college grounds of Hi-Tech Robotic Systemz Ltd. provides very restricted space for such examination but that has not clogged the company from designing Novus Drive independent transport that can ship more than 6 people, which was displayed at the AutoExpo in 2016.
An alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University, Gaurav Singh, has invested near about 3 years on the project and for him witnessing the transport drive on its own is a sensation that cannot be easily described through words.
“This is about obsession. To come up with such an invention out here in a country such as India and not the U.S., also indicates what we can accomplish with hard work and dedication,” he claimed.
The firm, established in 2004 by Anuj Kapuria, who stepped out from Carnegie Mellon University while pursuing his PhD program, has been operating noiselessly over the past 10 years to become an expert in driverless technology of vehicles, a section where Tesla and Google are the dominators.
On the other hand, being an Indian firm in an industry where not many have risked into, it has not been a simple voyage for the company to produce a driverless transport and similar techniques for different vehicles.
“One of the most exigent parts is the trust and awareness between international users about the tools coming from our country for vehicles that are driverless,” Kapuria said.
Still, he said that the firm has been capable to overcome the obstacle via intellectual property, which it has made over years both in Europe as well as the U.S. along with India and other up-and-coming countries.
When asked how certain is the company of opposing with the rivals such as Tesla, Google, and other international companies in the area of independent driving, he stated: “We are aggressive about enabling the technology.”
For now, the future seems to be having driverless cars. And it is clear, by seeing the efforts, that it will be India to accomplish it first.