The autonomous golf cart
Project
TL;DR
The golf cart is the first AV@B vehicle a person can sit in. It is drive-by-wire, so Berkeley Driver can steer, accelerate and brake it.
We use it to develop and validate the stack in controlled environments before moving to larger vehicles.
Why a golf cart
Small robots are cheap to crash and quick to iterate on, but they do not behave like a vehicle carrying people. A golf cart is the smallest step up to human scale: real passengers, real braking distances, and room for a full sensor kit.
Where it fits
The cart is one step on the Mobility roadmap.
Simulation → robots → golf cart → full-size vehicles → a service on campus
What comes next
Once the stack holds up on the cart, the same software moves to full-size vehicles, working toward a safe, approved, geofenced autonomous service for the Berkeley community.