it is at liberty to namewe dont want to be in a space thats heavily regulated before we attempted fully autonomous driving on public roads with passengers we thought wed try this said vinay v cofounder and one of the creators of the erstwhile low cost simputer tablet initially we were targeting the us and european markets but we were surprised to see demand for our solution coming from within india as welldesigned to haul loads the firm has reimagined the use of a vehicle with autonomous technology rather than retrofitting it to an existing vehicle it is fully electric uses lidar light detection and ranging and other sensors to navigate autonomouslyin the us or europe our solution could save companies costs as it could replace a human who operates a tug today but in india manufacturers want to remove variability and bring in more productivity and efficiency vinay said it is not a labour replacing technology they want to make sure they are utilising to the highest possible levelrobotic tractors mining equipment and specialised nonroad vehicles are expected to debut in india far sooner than selfdriving cars but firms are devising even onroad applications keeping in mind the nature of the technology which requires large amounts of local data and trainingall new cars and heavy vehicles sold in india by 2022 will need to be equipped with an advanced driver assistance system adas including automatic braking collision avoidance and lane departure warning said transport minister nitin gadkari in september last year the move is seen as a first step towards rolling out autonomous vehicles as adas systems packaged with more advanced algorithms form the basis of all autonomous systems todayflux auto a bengalurubased company is building an autonomous truck that can work on highwaysthe company has conducted a 10kilometrelong test with its level3 autonomous prototype which is capable of driving in a lane maintaining a steady speed slowing down or speeding up based on traffic and detecting and avoiding collisionsalthough the driver will still need to be ready to take control when the system cannot cope with a situation it can take a lot of the stress out of driving long distanceswere not looking to build vehicles and we will look to work with the manufacturers or retrofit vehicles of a large fleet operator said pranav manpuria cofounder and ceo of flux auto we are already working with the government and defence forces and are also in talks with a few oemsmumbaibased fisheyebox innovation lab claims it is building a level4 autonomous car on par with what a few global auto giants have already donethere are different levels of autonomy and were not going to jump to level5 in one day indian auto companies have already started moving towards this and were working with a few of them said pinaki laskar ceo of fisheyebox innovation lab adding the biggest hindrance is lack of regulations to conduct tests onroadautonomous driving is the only way for india to bring down its