Engineering students in Waterford have built a self-driving robotic car.
The team of eight students from the Applied Robotics Lab at Waterford Institute of Technology built the vehicle in just 12 weeks.
The adapted Toyota Corolla safely managed to navigate its way around some of the institute's campus.
Those involved in the project are students on WIT's BEng in Electronic Engineering, which is an extra year long course on top of the two-year Higher Certificate in Engineering in Electronic Engineering.
They are part of the WIT School of Engineering Applied Electronics Stream, which enables students to get an honours degree in Applied Electronics without having to have higher level maths to enter.
"One of the coolest sounds we have ever heard on a project was listening to the car increasing revs as its gets ready to go," said lecturer Jason Berry, the lead engineer in WIT's Applied Robotics Lab in a statement.
"The project is the bread and butter of what any engineer is all about - figuring stuff out for yourself. Third year is a big transition for our students into the world of self learning."
The team used a web camera and some computer vision software to enable the car to see, so that it could decide whether to go, turn or stop.
A go message was converted into an accelerator command which was sent to the car's engine management system that interpreted it as a press on the accelerator.
A similar approach was used to instruct the car's engine management system to tell the power steering when to turn.
The braking team used a heavy duty servo motor to physically push and pull the brake pedal in order to stop the car.
