The Department of Computer Science, School of Arts and Sciences, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Mysuru, organized a webinar on AI for Autonomous Vehicle on July 2, 2021. The objective of the webinar was ‘Insights of area of autonomous vehicles, inspiring researchers and people from academia to implement the methods and techniques discussed in building such systems’. A total of 150 participants attended the webinar.

The objective of the webinar was Insights of area of autonomous vehicles, inspiring researchers and people from academia to implement the methods and techniques discussed in building such systems.

The session started with a Lightning talk on Intelligent Information Systems with special reference to Document Processing Systems by Dr. N. Shobha Rani (Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, School of Arts and Sciences, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Mysuru). She discussed through steps of digitization of documents, giving a perception on real time processing of documents on mobile phones , outlining challenges. The various methods and techniques in pre-processing Malayalam scripts on palm leaf were also insisted.

The first thematic talk on AI challenges for Autonomous vehicle by Dr Ajay Kumar (Post-Doctoral Researcher, DaeguGyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), South Korea). An introduction to autonomous and self-driving vehicles were given , followed with the comparison between them , various levels of automation was discussed in depth , the benefits it has posed on human kind and its vast applications was mentioned also the Lidar challenges were discussed.

The next thematic talk was Autonomous Vehicle: Mobility as a service for Digital Inclusion” by Mr. Biswajith Biswas (Chief Data Scientist in Tata Elxsi, Mysuru). Wider dimensions on E vehicles were given, and the statistics of autonomous vehicles and their status in the current scenario were projected. The importance of SLAs in Mobility as a service was mentioned and also summarised five parameters of CASEU.

The next thematic talk was on Reinforcement Learning for Safe and Efficient Planning in Autonomous Driving by Dr. Anirban Santar (Research Software Engineer at Google Research India). The resource person gave an introduction to the big picture of the autonomous vehicle, how reinforcement learning could eventually handle unpredictable behaviour, discussing the depth of Imitation learning and also displayed the working model of the simulator he designed. The resource person discussed various algorithms needed to implement autonomous vehicles.

Final thematic talk on “Role of Edge & Cloud Machine language in Autonomous vehicle”, by Dr. R. Dines (Principal Engineer, Samsung Electro Mechanics, India). Resource person gave an introduction to different phases of Artificial Intelligence and insisted on preparation of datasets and designing robust intelligent systems by preparing inputs and outputs adequately.

Overall the session gave a lot of insights into this area of autonomous vehicles, inspiring researchers and people from academia to implement the methods and techniques discussed in building such systems.

Outcome: Participants got the idea of AI and its use in Autonomous Vehicles.