Earlier this week, Perrone Robotics, Inc., and Local Motors Inc. announced an agreement to develop next-generation autonomous shuttles that will integrate Perrone’s autonomous vehicle (AV) technology into Local Motors’ Olli shuttle.

The collaboration brings together two leading innovators in the AV industry. Perrone holds a pioneer patent for its MAX general-purpose robotics operating system. With its TONY (TO Navigate You) solution, the company has pioneered a “drop-in any vehicle” retrofit kit approach to autonomy, making it one of the most flexible and adaptable solutions available. Local Motors, a world leader in shared electric autonomous shuttles, is leveraging 3D printing and agile processes to deliver vehicles like Olli that evolve quickly with customer needs.

Perrone has come a long way since its early beginnings. In the Mojave Desert on the heels of its participation in the historic 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge semifinals, a pioneering and historic event for driverless vehicles. That’s when Paul Perrone, Founder and CEO of Perrone, turned on the company’s first AV. After a few quick commands, “Tommy” was launched and achieved a land speed record at the time for fully autonomous travel, driving a course through the desert at greater than 80 mph (128 km/h)—completely on its own.

With the Local Motors agreement, the companies believe they will dramatically improve mobility options across the transit and transportation value chain while enhancing the customer and end-user experience. They plan on launching the Olli vehicle with Perrone’s TONY AV technology in the fall of 2021, and Perrone Robotics will now be the strategic software vendor for the Olli autonomous shuttle.

“This new OEM agreement is an important step in expanding our current customer base while enhancing the vehicle experience for passengers,” said Vikrant Aggarwal, President and COO of Local Motors. “Our work with Perrone Robotics is another example of Local Motors’ open strategy of evaluating innovations in the market and integrating the best technology into Olli.”

The TONY kit will be retrofitted into Olli shuttles to enable deployments across customer use cases on both public and private roads where fully autonomous capability at posted speeds is required. The partners will support the integration, testing, deployment, and scaled delivery and deployment of Olli vehicles integrated with Perrone’s technology for U.S. and international markets.

“Local Motors’ Olli vehicle line represents a novel approach to autonomous people movement in a visionary futuristic platform that can be micro-manufactured at scale today,” said Perrone. “Out of the gate, the new TONY AV-driven Olli offers a reliable full autonomy solution operating at posted roadway speeds in a safety certifiable framework.”

The Local Motors collaboration is just the latest example of the growing number of partners and applications of Perrone’s TONY retrofit technology.

 

Retrofitting The Badger

Earlier in August, Perrone announced that it was recently awarded a contract by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to deliver an electric low-speed vehicle (LSV) integrated with the TONY kit. The shuttle, nicknamed “The Badger,” is part of an effort to integrate AV shuttles into public transportation systems in Racine, WI. It will be used across student, faculty, and guest transit operations. The contract award includes deployment of TONY, the licensing of software, and integration of a Polaris GEM LSV.

UW-Madison’s Traffic Operations and Safety (TOPS) Laboratory will use the highly automated vehicle on public and private roads for research, data collection, and public engagement. Through a partnership with the city of Racine, Gateway Technical College, and UW-Madison, the AV will be part of a larger initiative focused on bringing mobility options across Wisconsin.

The deployment of the shuttle will be based on a fixed-route service on private and public roads surrounding the technical college campus with plans to expand to a downtown Racine connector route and on-demand service during off-peak hours. Trained Racine Transit operators will man the AV shuttles during service to oversee operations.

The research initiative is intended to help advance the safety and efficacy of AVs while also educating students and the public on the benefits of these technologies in a smart, interconnected urban environment, said David Noyce, TOPS Lab Director.

“Demonstrating the way automated transportation solutions can be harnessed efficiently alongside existing public transportation systems is an important step toward building smarter and safer cities,” said Perrone. “This partnership provides a great opportunity to showcase the capability of Perrone Robotics’ autonomous retrofit platform TONY, and its robotics software platform MAX, while improving access to transportation for the City of Racine and providing educational opportunities for students connected to this program.”

TOPS Lab researchers will monitor and evaluate the safety and operation of the AV shuttle. Gateway Technical College will house the shuttle and incorporate it into education and training opportunities to prepare the workforce for future employment opportunities and to expand research, data collection, and public engagement.

 

Automating Tropos eCUVs

Also in August, Perrone announced it had struck a deal with Tropos Motors, the Silicon Valley, CA-based compact EV manufacturer to produce a series of fully autonomous, electric low-speed vehicles (eLSVs) and trucks. The new vehicle platform will combine Perrone’s TONY AV retrofit kits with the full line of Tropos vehicles including the ABLE electric commercial utility vehicles.

“Our best-in-class electric vehicles coupled with Perrone’s turnkey, drop-in AV solution helps our customers transition to more cost-effective and environmentally friendly fleets simply and quickly,” said John Bautista, Founder and CEO of Tropos Technologies. “Autonomous eLSVs are becoming increasingly important to the market given the zero emissions and reduced total cost of ownership when compared to traditional fleet vehicles.”

Tropos vehicles are engineered to operate in tight quarters with a short wheelbase and small turning radius in indoor, outdoor, and off-road applications. The compact utility AV solution is intended to work across a range of cargo, delivery, agricultural, industrial, municipal, and campus transportation applications. Future platforms in development will include a series of emergency and first-responder solutions to be available later this year.

“Integrating the Tropos novel payload-adaptable vehicle platform with Perrone’s fully autonomous technology delivers a new kind of option for customers who need cost-effective and scalable solutions across their cargo and delivery model,” said Perrone. “The collaboration results in an accelerated production pathway to meet the increasing demand for electric low-speed vehicle applications across industries.”

 

Relying on TONY

The recently announced collaborations and others are opening up new channels for Perrone to deploy its AV solution built around a patented full-stack platform and a safety certifiable framework. The company has engineered its AV retrofit kit to integrate into many vehicles for the autonomous transit of people and goods in geo-fenced and localized operations. This enables its customers to accelerate the global deployment of AV fleet solutions for the movement of passengers and cargo.

The TONY retrofit kit includes both commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and patented software. Core components include the MAX full-stack autonomous software platform, which is vehicle, sensor, control, and communications protocol agnostic. It performs sensor data ingestion and perception, sensor fusion, AI-driven maneuver selection, path planning, and control messaging.

The kit uses a mix of COTS LiDAR, RADAR, camera, GPS, and ultrasonic sensors configured for the operational domain. A BAK (Bolt-in Autonomy Kit) or drive-by-wire adapters are used for steering, brake, throttle, and shift controls. The E-Box is a flexible and modular packaging of COTS computers, communication adapters, and other electronics for onboard autonomous controls. The company’s patented safety and security Watchdog platform independently monitors, verifies, and validates the autonomous system.

Perrone received national recognition for technically reaching SAE Level 5 autonomy in its 2019 public road demonstrations in Albemarle County, VA. The company operated for several months throughout the summer and fall on public roads with zero driver interventions.

It continues to build on that success with over 30 vehicle types outfitted, 40,000 autonomous miles driven, and additional patents and AV applications. Helping Paul Perrone grow the business are John Mottola, VP of Operations; Colleen Hahn, VP of Marketing and Communications; Max DePiro, VP of Engineering; Don Perrone, VP of Projects; Janet Bourland, VP of Talent; Nick Mykris, Chief Software Scientist; and Danny Vinson, VP of Assurance.

“We have been operating in a driverless fashion with our autonomy since 2005, including the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge,” said Perrone. “It’s great to see our pioneering research take hold as a reliable commercial solution that’s deployable now.”

 

Developing Autono-MaaS

The company believes that reaching performance milestones and its continued collaboration with automated mobility service providers are crucial to developing the emerging Autono-MaaS (autonomous-mobility as a service) marketplace. It hopes that its recent real-world demonstrations with low-speed vehicles and large shuttles, cargo, and delivery vehicles will help prove that reliable AV technology can help provide innovative mobility and access options for transit and transportation solutions providers.

To accelerate commercialization of its AV efforts, in August the company announced the hiring of transit and AV mobility veteran, Joseph Holmes, as its Global Business Development VP. Holmes joins Perrone from EasyMile, where he was responsible for driving sales activity in North America. In his role at Perrone, Holmes will lead the company’s sales efforts to expand AV customer deployments and focus on end-to-end mobility solutions to increase efficiencies across the transit and transportation value chain.

Holmes joins the Perrone team during a high-growth period for the company with recent announcements on the expansion of secondary facilities at the American Center for Mobility in Ypsilanti, MI, and capital investment from Capstone Holdings Inc.