A Parallel Autonomous Driving System

This project will develop a parallel autonomy system to create a collision-proof car. We will instrument a Toyota vehicle with a suite of sensors pointed at the environment and at the driver to create situational awareness, both inside and outside the vehicle. We will develop and integrate the perception and decision- making software components to implement the parallel autonomy software core. We will also develop and implement novel algorithms that take control of the vehicle in dangerous situations to prevent accidents. We will evaluate the system both in simulation and in testing on a closed-course near MIT. We will increase the difficulty of our tests over time, moving from lower to higher speeds and from low to high environmental complexity. We will improve the system over time, following a modular design in which we continually update critical system components with improved algorithms for perception, motion planning and control.