ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - July 2023 - 14

Sensors
Self-driving Supercar!
This year's iteration of Italy's classic-car-oriented Mille Miglia race showcased an audacious nod
to the future: an autonomous high-performance Maserati.
by Chris Clonts
It's not every day that you see a $230,000 supercar
with its racy looks obscured by bolted- and glued-on
sensors and wiring. But this was Italy, where SAE
Media was attending simulator company VI-grade's
Zero Prototypes Summit. Still, people seeing the
Maserati MC20 coupe decked out like this did a double
take and exclaimed: " What... is... that? "
Turns out the pricey car is part of a project to
autonomously drive the revered 1000 Miglia, a
vintage-car rally that spans Italy and its many different
types of roads.
The rally in its current form owes its heritage
to the original Mille Miglia, an endurance race that
ran from 1927 to 1957. It was reincarnated in 1977 to
host cars from 1957 and earlier. The car used in the
rally, which runs in mid-June every year, was to be a
Maserati MC20 Cielo convertible.
Sergio Matteo Savaresi, an electrical engineering
professor at Milan Polytechnic University, runs the
team that is acting as the systems integrator for the
project and said that although the technical challenges
were many, the clearing regulatory hurdles presented
their own major effort. " Authorization from the EU
and especially Italy is quite difficult, " he said.
The 2023 1000 Miglia course is 2000 km (1243
miles) from Brescia to Rome and back. Milan
Polytechnic's development " mule " Maserati won't
attempt the entire race route - at least in this, it's initial
attempt. " The challenge is [automated] driving for long
periods of time, but most importantly high road diversity, "
Savaresi said. " We selected an iconic part of Mille
Miglia that crosses Italy on very different roads. "
The car uses cameras and radar provided by
Continental, Robosense M1 lidar and redundant GNSS
and IMU systems. All signals coming from sensors are
collected through an on-board AutoHawk hard-realtime
computer platform by Concurrent Real-Time. The
team didn't want to go into the car's braking, steering
or power-management systems, so instead the prototype
Maserati uses actuators that physically actuate the
steering wheel, accelerator and brakes. Networking
equipment came from Cisco.
Simulation hours donated by VI-grade allowed
the team to test the car on 18,000 km (1,200 miles)
of virtual roads in just a few months. That's because
certification called for the team to drive 6,000-km
(3,730-mile) stretches in urban, suburban and highway
settings, including specific situations including everything
from roundabouts to cattle crossings.
Savaresi said the team is shooting for the autonomous
project to drive the entire distance of the 2024
event, but that regardless of the outcome, the project
has been a good demonstration of the knowledge base
of the Italian automotive supply community. ■
The Maserati C20 coupe
test mule seen here
normally has even more
equipment in it, but some
was being transferred to
the C20 Cielo, the project's
official car for the 2023
1000 Miglia rally.
14 July 2023
ADAS & AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE ENGINEERING
SAE/Chris Clonts

ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - July 2023

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