SME snapshot

In the latest in our series on pioneering European tech companies, Aitronik Chief Executive Roberto Mati explains how the company draws on the latest research to create bespoke robot vehicles which precisely fit customer needs.

How to robotize any vehicle, with Aitronik

COMPANY: Aitronik MAIN BUSINESS: vehicle robitization (ground, air, sea) LOCATION: Pisa, Italy WEBSITE: aitronik.com

Aitronik was born in 2017 to offer customized vehicle robotization services to manufacturers of ground, aerial, and marine / submarine vehicles. Located in Pisa, the cradle of robotics in Italy, the company delivers full-range, rapidly scalable, solutions to design autonomous vehicles.

At Aitronik, engineers robotize every kind of vehicle. Their background has solid roots in academic research and industrialgrade autonomous ground, aerial, and marine applications, ranging from participation in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge (the event that paved the way to self-driving cars), to the more recent robotization of forklifts, cleaning machines, lawnmowers, tractors, aerial drones and underwater vehicles, for their respective industrial manufacturers.

In 2011, Aitronik’s founders decided to develop a novel, platformindependent software architecture to serve as the enabling core technology to robotize almost any kind of vehicle. Today, the autonomous guidance, navigation, control, and perception modules can be integrated and customized on multiple embedded devices for robotic applications, from the complete range of embedded platforms provided by NVIDIA, to PC104 single-board computers. Interfaces for rapid software- / hardware-in-the-loop simulations are integrated by design and, where required by the application, ROS/ROS2 middleware can easily be integrated.

A robust sensor fusion module can analyse measurements from lidars, radars, cameras, inertial measurement units (IMUs), GPS, and many more sensors adopted on autonomous robots. Sensor fusion integrates up-to-date robust and efficient algorithms from the scientific literature, and specific customizations that optimize efficiency, performance, and resource requirements.

Working with vehicle manufacturers in different applications, Aitronik engineers start from understanding the specific industrial scenario. Each project is tailored to the specific application, whether it is an autonomous towing tractor for airports, an autonomous underwater vehicle for surveillance, or a fleet of reach stackers for container handling at ports.

Together with the client, they select the most appropriate project management tools (traditional or agile), then move on to concept sketching. In a continuous co-design approach, roboticists at Aitronik select sensors and electronic boards to be integrated on board the vehicles, and define the optimal architecture both with the client’s research and development (R+D) and industrial design departments. Integration of the entire software stack for vehicle autonomy occurs at a later stage, along with the development of new software and custom functions.

In addition, Aitronik engineers collaborate with national and international research centres, and help raise the technology level of robotics research by participating in European-funded projects. Under the H2020 ECSEL Comp4Drones project, for example, Aitronik is delivering an autonomous rover that cooperates with an aerial drone on farms to quickly identify plant diseases, save water, and improve the quality of crops.

While you may never see its logo on your robotic vehicle, Aitronik technology may well be powering it.