Amazingly, five brilliant students of Lovely Professional University invented a “driverless golf car” which was simply astonishing and a treat to the eyes. This driverless golf car can be controlled by a single mobile phone device being at any place. This amazing car has been enabled to run on the auto mode as well as on the manual mode and is enhanced with some safety features such as the child-lock while the car is in the auto mode. No person can drive the car even after sitting next to the steering wheel but this is possible only if a two-way communication is enabled and facilitated by the remote-operator.
The students of the University also confirmed of the fact that the car can be set to drive during the night hours and their test over the car confirmed of a driving of more than 1,000 kms. This “driverless golf car” is embedded with two internet protocol (IP) wireless cameras which are fitted, one situated on the front side and the other on the rear side in order to monitor the surroundings of the car on the real time basis. In the early January, this project was initiated by four students namely, Bikas of MTech (electronics), Lokesh Ramina of final year BTech (electronics), Rahul Jain, third year student of BTech (mechanical engg) and Suvendu, final year student of BTech (mechanical engg).
The students said in their own words saying “We conceived the idea in January this year in our robotics and intelligent systems community (RICS) – a club of students to share their ideas and work on these. We worked continuously for 72 hours non-stop till we were able to give an initial shape to our idea of preparing basic control of the vehicle – a golf car. Next, a second-year student of BTech (computer science) named as Barkha Prasad too accompanied the team of four in order to enhance the car with features based on computer applications. The students also said that access to the internet is a necessity in order to run this car.
This car has been devised with the utilization of internet access, mobile phone device, computing device as laptop, C+ programming, micro-controller board with ATMEGA 128 IC and was developed under the electrical control circuit. Lokesh in his own words said “Presently, the project has been utilized in an electrically-operated car, which would also be possible in any other type of vehicle.” Ashok Mittal, the LPU chancellor reported saying that there are plans to run this golf-car within the campus premises along a dedicated path and he said in his own words saying “the students would now be working on improving it, after which it may find applications in defence, agriculture and other areas. The university would be interacting with automobile industry on this technology”