Infrastructure for Developing and Testing Autonomous Vehicles
The Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna is realizing a road track for the development and validation of intelligent self-driving vehicles, with the aim of supporting the mobility of people with disabilities. The road track, operational by the end of 2026, will be built on a plot of land in the Ospedaletto area, in Pisa, granted on free loan by the Municipality of Pisa, which decided to invest in this topic to encourage research in mobility for the cities of the future.
This infrastructure, unique in Italy, will be essential to validate the integration of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, cybersecurity, and 5G/6G mobile radio networks, applied to autonomous driving. The project, coordinated by Giorgio Buttazzo, professor of computer engineering at the TEPIC Institute, is financially supported by PNNR funds under the BRIEF project (acronym for Biorobotics Research and Innovation Engineering Facilities), led by Arianna Menciassi, professor of industrial bioengineering at the Institute of BioRobotics and vice-rector of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.
Once completed, the infrastructure will recreate a realistic urban environment with intersections, traffic lights, and road signs, enabling the safe testing of autonomous vehicles to support the transport of people with disabilities. The area will be monitored by sensors and cameras connected to a high-speed network to evaluate the performance of the algorithms and vehicles. A building will also be available to establish an infrastructure control station.
Volkswagen Golf8 Hybrid with Leo Drive Argus
The Scuola has also purchased a new-generation Volkswagen Golf 8 Hybrid equipped with the Leo Drive Argus solution to develop innovative technologies for autonomous vehicles. Argus integrates advanced hardware components, such as cameras, radars, LiDARs, and an onboard computer, to create powerful and adaptable autonomous vehicle technologies that are entirely controlled via software, thanks to artificial intelligence algorithms for environmental perception and vehicle control. The autonomous driving software system is fully open and modifiable, enabling the development of frontier research algorithms.
Devices installed in the car
| No. | Device | Brand | Features |
| 6 | Camera | Neousys | 2MP (1920 x 1080), 30 FPS |
| 1 | Lidar | Hesai | 32-Channel Medium-Range |
| 2 | Lidar | Hesai | 64-Channel Short-Range |
| 2 | Lidar | Hesai | 128-Channel Short-Range |
| 2 | Antenna | Tallysman | Triple-band GNSS |
| 2 | Lidar | Hesai | 128-Channel Short-Range |
| 1 | GNSS Receiver | Applanix | GNSS-Inertial system |
| 1 | Computer | Neousys | 32-core Computing Platform |
| 1 | ECU | Leo Drive | Drive By Wire Electronic Control Unit |
| 1 | Power Distribution System | Leo Drive | 10-channel Power Distribution System |