For active safety, the next steps will be an evaluation of the influence of the autonomous capabilities of the vehicles, in the safety performance of the occupants and of VRUs. In addition, the gimbals will be combined with the latest generation of ADAS devices with AI-based on-board decision-making processes and will be compared to the Mobileye system.
The zone partitioned EE architecture is intended as a Distributed Learning Framework (DLF) that allows individual autonomous vehicles to upload in real-time or on a time increment basis, their operation parameters (e.g. time of travel, captured images of obstruction, faults and operations failure modes) to a central knowledge base that can be used for continuous training of machine learning models.
In terms of the energy storage system, electrothermal stability will be addressed to assure safety, robustness and an acceptable range with good performance in all climate conditions. The next generation of hybrid supercapacitor-battery cell technology will be integrated into the vehicle. Multi-Moby will also address the optimisation of charging at low voltages, studying and promoting products capable of operating at 200V-250 V (rather than 500 V). This could also allow smaller electrical connectors more suitable for urban EVs.
The use of SiC MOSFET components to improve power conversion performance or implement system innovation is nowadays a popular scenario for many system designers. In fast DC EV charging, 1200 V SiC MOSFET technology enables shortened charging times. Compared to a silicon-based solution, output power can be doubled even with the same footprint thanks to reduced part count and 50% loss reduction, thereby also cutting charging time in half.
The final plan in Multi-Moby is to introduce robot food and medical delivery vehicles to the market one year after the completion of Multi-Moby. The gimbals for autonomous driving is expected to give a technological and price advantage that will facilitate the uptake of affordable self-driving system kits, expected to be available by 2025 at 5000€ or below. This will enable Multi-Moby to address the growing need of a reliable, affordable sensing and high-speed computational on-board platforms, to improve flexibility and optimisation of manufacturing processes and to present multi-purpose vehicles at an affordable cost.
