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.

Meet the team

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 profile image

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 profile image

Omar Hanif

Postgraduate Researcher (Ph.D. Scholar) in Automotive Engineering

Glen Mason profile image

Glen Mason

Postgraduate research student in functional safety analysis of cooperative adaptive cruise control systems

Marco Visca profile image

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)

Umberto Montanaro profile image

Dr Umberto Montanaro

Senior Lecturer in Autonomous Systems and Control 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

Publications

Our Lab group publishes in high impact journals such as IEEE Transactions.

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.