VIP Section E is a platform for continued Autonomy Lab research on the fast-growing field of autonomous vehicles and compete in the IGVC event.

This course will investigate advanced control strategies from both theoretical and practical perspectives through a comprehensive Autonomous Vehicles project. Analysis and design for nonlinear systems using describing function, state-variables, Lyapunov's stability criterion and Popov's method, State estimators and observers, may be discussed. This may include, but not limited to, PID compensators, full state feedback (pole placement, LQR), output feedback (state feedback with observer) – feedback linearization, sliding mode control, optimal control (MPC), and application specific control such as geometric control and H-infinity control.

Principles of power electronics. Operating characteristics of Bipolar Junc- tion Transistors, IGBTs, MOSFETs and Thyristors, power converters, basic switching circuits, AC/DC, DC/DC, DC/AC converters and their applications. Students are required to design, con- struct, diagnose and test power electronics converters.

A cross-disciplinary section that is dedicated to finding advanced solutions to some of the most pressing issues that are currently facing our cities. This course will focus on “Autonomous Vehicles of Future Cities”. Students will research and learn what it takes to design and deploy an autonomous vehicle. They will work closely with Cooper’s IGVC Self-Drive Team. The first half of the semester, students will choose two sub-teams: Drive-by-wire, Tech (sign/ lane detection and mapping), Mechanical Hardware, Electrical Hardware, and Controls. The goal of this period is to become familiar with the technical concepts (software and hardware) of the subteams. The second half of the semester, students will choose one subteam and will be asked to design a solution to a related specific challenge. Students are encouraged to integrate ideas and concepts from different disciplines such as: design, ML, Robotics, IoT, vision, lighting, programming, and control theory.