Autonomous vehicles for micro-mobility

Abstract Autonomous vehicles have been envisioned for more than 100 years. One of the first suggestions was a front cover Scientific America back in 1916. Today, it is possible to get cars that drive autonomously extended distances. We are also starting see micro-mobility solutions, such as Nuro pizza delivery. Building autonomous can operate urban environments with diverse set road-users far from trivial. Early 2018 Contextual Robotics Institute at UC San Diego launched an effort build full stack vehicle micro-mobility. The motivations were diverse: i) development system operation environment many pedestrians, ii) design does not rely on dense maps (or HD-maps they sometimes named), iii) strategies truly robust systems, and iv) framework educate next-generation engineers. In this paper, we present research design, prototyping, evaluation vehicle. From evaluation, several directions explored account shortcomings. Lessons issues future work additionally drawn work.