Autonomous Systems & Applied AI

The field of autonomous intelligent systems is at the forefront of many approaches to solving the grand challenges that face engineers worldwide.

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About This Lab

To equip engineering graduates with the skills and expertise needed to tackle these challenges, the Quanser Autonomous Systems and AI Lab is a turnkey collection of platforms, libraries, course resources, and laboratory infrastructure that brings complex theories to life. To catalyze innovative research, the lab offers powerful open-architecture platforms and digital twins that accelerate development and offer a reliable and flexible design and development backbone to generations of researchers.

Empowering Research and Education with the Autonomous Systems and AI Lab
The core of the Autonomous Systems and AI Lab is a set of powerful autonomous vehicles that are designed specifically for cutting-edge autonomous systems and AI research. While the ground robots, self-driving cars, and drones that make up the lab are ideal for research, the Autonomous Systems and AI lab systems can also easily extend across a variety of courses and years, bridging into advanced autonomous systems and AI courses, capstone projects, outreach, and student competitions. The vehicles that operate independently and collaboratively at the core of the labs include the QDrone 2, QCar, and QBot Platform.
QDrone 2: Revolutionizing Autonomous Indoor Drones with NVIDIA Xavier NX
The QDrone 2 is a powerful and sensor-rich indoor drone that offers an unprecedented level of open access to the drone's complete control, localization, coordination, and processing systems. Equipped with a powerful NVIDIA Xavier NX embedded computer, the cameras and sensors on the drone can be efficiently processed and fused using advanced control and intelligent decision-making algorithms.
QCar: Pioneering Self-Driving Research and Education
The QCar takes the sensors and NVIDIA TX2 processing stack and applies it to self-driving teaching and research challenges. The 1/10th scale car offers an ideal platform to teach students the algorithms used in modern self-driving systems. It gives researchers an ideal bridge to bring their driving algorithms and solutions to complex driving scenarios to life. Beyond self-driving, the open nature of the QCar and the wide variety of sensors offer a great platform to prototype and validate a wide range of autonomous intelligent systems research.
QBot Platform: A Versatile Solution for Autonomous Systems and Robotics Research
The QBot Platform is the most versatile autonomous system offered as a part of the lab, combining the NVIDIA processing and software stack with a general-purpose mechatronic platform for robotics, autonomous systems, AI/ML, mechatronics and smart manufacturing teaching and research. The differential drive robot comes complete with a wide range of sensors, powerful actuators able to carry up to 50kg, and flexible electromechanical interfacing options. Finally, the QBot Platform can be paired with the QArm Mini to add additional manipulation capabilities and an additional dynamic camera for coordination and inspection.
Quanser's Turnkey Autonomous Research Studios: Empowering Advanced Research and Education
These diverse and powerful platforms are combined into two teaching and research studios: the Autonomous Vehicles Research Studio to address general intelligent autonomous systems research and the Self-Driving Car Studio for self-driving teaching, research, and outreach. Both studios are complete turnkey research studios, equipping researchers and educators with the vehicles, accessories, infrastructure, devices, software, and resources needed to get from a concept to a lab progression or publication faster and consistently over generations of projects and students.