Year: 2018

I had an invited talk for Machine Monitoring & Control Lab (http://mmc.hanyang.ac.kr/),  the Department of Automotive Engineering (http://ae.hanyang.ac.kr/en/) at Hanyang University.

The title was Robotics and Deep Learning for Autonomous Vehicles.

The Kettering University SAE AutoDrive team finished in fourth place overall and received five awards at the conclusion of the inaugural competition on May 5 in Yuma, Arizona.

Kettering’s team – the Bulldog Bolt – received the following awards during the first competition:

• Second place, Social Responsibility report
• Second place, Technical Reports (based on the interface analysis and safety concept document)
• Second place, Lateral challenge
• Third place, Design Concept report
• Third place, Design Concept event (based on their presentation)

This article is excerpted from https://news.kettering.edu/news/international-grad-student-travels-india-kettering-university-make-dreams-reality

Shobit Sharma ‘18 knew Kettering University would set him up for success not only for his graduate studies, but in his career. He believed it so much that he traveled from India to Flint, Michigan, to make his dreams a reality.

“Kettering focused on practical lab work instead of just theoretical knowledge. That made it easier for me to decide to come here,” said Sharma, who is studying Automotive Systems for his graduate studies. “I believe if you know all the concepts and you don’t know how to apply them it’s really of no use.” 

Sharma studied Instrumentation and Control Engineering at Mumbai University in India for his undergraduate degree. Looking at what he wanted to do after that, he knew he wanted to incorporate autonomous vehicle technology and vehicle electronics.

At Kettering, many opportunities opened up for Sharma. He became a research assistant for Dr. Girma Tewolde working on a small, low-cost autonomous vehicle. He then also joined the Society of Automotive Engineers’ (SAE) AutoDrive Challenge, an international autonomous vehicle competition. The challenge tasks faculty and students to develop and demonstrate a fully operational autonomous driving passenger vehicle.

On Kettering’s team, Sharma’s main focus is the overall concept design, competition strategy and working with the vehicle’s software. He’s on the sensors sub team, looking at perception and detection.

“I knew the AutoDrive Challenge was a great match for me. When you decide you want to do a master’s and you know what you want to study and you get a project AutoDrive, it’s a dream come true,” Sharma said. “AutoDrive has been fun but very challenging at the same time. There’s so much to do in so little time. But I’m happy for the challenge.”

We tested Bulldog Bolt for the 1st year of AutoDriveChallge before sending out the vehicle to Yuma, Arizona where the competition will take place.

I was featured on the cover of Kettering Magzine in Winter 2018.

I attended NVIDIA’s GPU Technical Conference at the end of March.

I presented “Robotics and Deep Learning for Autonomous Vehicles” in the Internation Education Program Seminar at Kettering Unversity, Feb 24, 2018. During lunchtime, we stopped by the Shaker Lab to see the Bulldog Bolt participating AutoDrive Challenge.

For the first time, I attended the Consumer Electronics Show 2018. The show almost seems like another auto show focusing on autonomous vehicles.