Shared laboratories embody a partnership between a research unit and a company to support long-term research. The partners sign a renewable agreement for a period of at least four years, laying down rules in advance on how the findings will be used and how intellectual property will be shared.
This scientific and technological partnership is founded on the relationship of trust that has been growing for more than 10 years between the research units of Renault and Heudiasyc. SIVALab (a French acronym for Integrated Systems for Autonomous Vehicles Lab) is being created to provide a structure geared to long-term scientific developments and major programmes.
The shared laboratory, whose governance and resources are being provided jointly by Renault and Heudiasyc, will deploy a four-year research programme on perception and localisation systems supplying honest, reliable navigation data for communicating autonomous vehicles.
The collaboration’s main purpose is to study and develop autonomous vehicle localisation and perception systems with a view to offering greater accuracy and reliability. In addition to sensors, data will be sourced and analysed from pre-defined navigation maps and dynamic connections from other users and the infrastructure. By smartly combining the data from these multiple sources, the vehicle will systematically turn out a better performance than with sensors alone, regardless of the situation.