Perrone Robotics Inc. yesterday announced that it has successfully completed a series of public road demonstrations of its autonomous vehicle technologies in Maryland and Virginia. The Crozet, Va.-based company said these performance milestones and continued collaboration with service providers are crucial to developing the emerging autonomous mobility-as-a-service, or “Autono-MaaS,” marketplace.
“Through real-world demonstrations with low-speed vehicles (LSVs) and large shuttles, cargo and delivery vehicles integrated with Perrone Robotics, the company continues to prove that reliable AV [autonomous vehicle] technology can help provide innovative mobility and access options for transit and transportation solutions providers,” said the company.
“We have been operating in a driverless fashion with our autonomy since 2005, including the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge,” stated Paul Perrone, founder and CEO of Perrone Robotics. “It's great to see our pioneering research take hold as a reliable commercial solution that's deployable now.”
Perrone Autonomy scales across vehicles, applications
Perrone Robotics said its Autonomy system is built around the MAX patented full-stack platform, the TONY retrofit kit, and the Safety Watchdog safety-certifiable framework. The company said it has developed TONY, short for “TO Navigate You,” is a vehicle-independent kit “to provide a complete 'artificial driver' solution.”
The result is an AV retrofit kit that can be integrated into any vehicle for applications transporting people and goods in geofenced and localized operations, it added. Customers can use Perrone's technologies across their gas-powered, diesel, and electric passenger and cargo shuttles, said the company.
Perrone Robotics claimed that its autonomous systems, which are piloted and in commercial production, can help commercial, municipal, and governmental customers increase transportation efficiencies, enhance safety, and accelerate zero-emission electric vehicle deployment.
It also offers a portfolio of existing turnkey autonomous shuttles and vehicles pre-integrated with the TONY retrofit kit. The company noted that such shuttles can be cheaper than other autonomous vehicles because they are operating in constrained routes at lower speeds and thus need fewer sensors and require a shorter build/test cycle.
Maryland demonstrations successful
Perrone Robotics conducted public road demonstrations in the city of Westminster, Md., as part of an event hosted by the Mid-Atlantic Gigabit Innovation Collaboratory (MAGIC) Autonomous Corridor Project. They were conducted with GreenPower Motor Co.'s AV Star, which GreenPower claimed is “the world's first and only fully autonomous, all-electric, ADA-compliant, FMVSS-certified and Buy American shuttle” integrated with TONY.
Perrone Robotics developed the operational design domain (ODD) route with the approval of the Maryland Department of Transportation, the City of Westminster Police Department, county government officials, and various other public stakeholders. The complex ODD route required the autonomous shuttle to successfully navigate a designated neighborhood, left and right turns, around a city park, a four-way stop, and through a historic city neighborhood.
“Perrone was able to deploy its AVs over a two-day period across Westminster, Md., in an impressive proof-of-concept demonstration,” said Graham Dodge, executive director of MAGIC. “The vehicles performed flawlessly on our public roads and represent a promising milestone for autonomous transportation.”
A week later, the company conducted back-to-back public road tests for customers with a GreenPower AV Star zero-emission shuttle and a LSV neighborhood electric vehicle (NEV), both integrated with Perrone Autonomy. These vehicles are slated for customer deployment later this summer for municipal and university transit applications.
Virginia trials and future plans
In addition to the ODD demonstrations in Maryland, said it reached SAE Level 5 autonomy in its 2019 public road demonstrations in Albemarle County in the Charlottesville, Va., area. It included multiple roundabouts, a stop-off at a post office, busy town intersections, and county roads. The company operated for several months with no safety driver interventions.
The company said it is continuing to build on its successes, with over 30 vehicle types outfitted, 40,000 autonomous miles driven, and more patents and AV applications. Perrone is continuing to develop additional AV transit, cargo, and delivery shuttles that it said will be ready for use in public fleets by late summer 2021.
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