Connected and Autonomous Vehicles Lab
The Connected and Autonomous Vehicles Lab (CAV Lab) is located in the School of Mechanical Engineering Sciences at the University of Surrey.
Overview
The CAV Lab is host to a team of academic scholars, engineers and mechatronic experts whose research has contributed to the state-of-the-art research in the areas of connected autonomous vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems here in the UK but also globally through its collaborative projects delivered in partnership with international companies.
Our Lab’s innovative approach has earnt it a reputation for delivering high impact and award winning research in areas such as:
- Cloud-assisted distributed vehicle control systems
- Intelligent decision-making of autonomous robotic systems
- Artificial intelligence enabled advanced driver assistance systems
- Cooperative situation awareness for connected and autonomous vehicles.
Our Director is Dr Saber Fallah who has been conducting CAV research since 2010. His research has generated four patents, and he is always keen to deliver real world solutions to the companies he works with to support their research and development objectives, but also deliver measurable commercial benefits. Our Lab also offers a range of facilities that can be used by external organisations.
Our capabilities in autonomous vehicles
Meet the team
Dr Saber Fallah
Lab Director
Ann Swift
Innovation and partnerships
Postdoctoral research fellows
Dr Ashith Rajendra Babu
Research fellow in learning-based MPC motion-planning for robotic manipulators
Dr Saeid Safavi
Research fellow in adaptive predictive fault detection for connected autonomous systems
Elnaz Shafipour Yourdshahi
Research fellow in the interactive decision making of fleet of autonomous robotic agents
Postgraduate research students
Thomas Barbier
Postgraduate research student in perception of morphology and kinematic properties of space debris for grasp planning using sensor fusion
Omar Hanif
Postgraduate Researcher (Ph.D. Scholar) in Automotive Engineering
Glen Mason
Postgraduate research student in functional safety analysis of cooperative adaptive cruise control systems
Marco Visca
Postgraduate research student in reinforcement learning path planning of autonomous planetary rovers
Research assistants
Carmen Barletta
Research assistant in energy management of a fleet of connected electric vehicles
Tatiana Farcas
Research assistant in augmented reality for situational awareness of autonomous systems
Hossein Hamid
Research assistant in predictive fault detection for autonomous systems
Alumni
Salar Arbabi
Postgraduate research student in cooperative decision making for automated driving in urban environment
Ainur Begalinova
Research fellow in 3D digital map construction for autonomous vehicle navigation
Samuel Green
Postgraduate research student in fault-tolerant cooperative vehicle state estimation (cloud-assisted)
Dr Umberto Montanaro
Lecturer in Systems and Control for Automotive Engineering
Johan Theunissen
Modelling predictive controls of semi-active suspension systems
Dr Zhengyuan Wang
Optimal Torque-Vectoring Control for stabilisation of Autonomous Vehicles
Research projects
Completed projects
Start date: March 2019
End date: September 2021
Start date: September 2018
End date: January 2019
Start date: 2017
End date: 2020
Start date: October 2013
End date: September 2016
Outreach
- Written an article in The Conversation magazine regarding the impact of autonomous cars and 5G technologies on future cities
- Interviewed by BBC Surrey Radio, Sputnik News and The Guardian, discussing the challenges and potentials of autonomous vehicles to the society and industry,
- Contributed in a white paper written by Publitek Company on the technological evolution of autonomous driving
- Invited by Huawei Technologies in Germany (Nov. 2018 and July 2019) to attend an expert panel to discuss the opportunities for Huawei to be involved in this field of research and business and investigated potential collaboration with CAV-Lab
- Chaired an industrial European forum discussing the IoT-Connected Smart Cars and Vehicles,
- Presented the CAV-Lab research to British, Chinese and USA delegates in 13th UK-China Workshop on Space Science and Technology and in Automation, AI and Robotics Workshop at the NASA Johnson Space Centre.
Main industrial and academic partners
