It is necessary to let go of all the past assumptions and constraints that the automotive industry has worked with, and take a fresh look at things to reimagine and pursue them. This is necessary as currently there is a convergence of electric, autonomous and connected, each of which is fairly disruptive, Dr Shankar Venugopal, Vice President, Mahindra Research Valley, Mahindra & Mahindra, said.
Addressing Mobility Outlook’s most recent virtual roundtable on “The Autonomous Driving (AD) Opportunity: Building Industry and Academia Collaboration,” powered by MathWorks, Dr Venugopal said the biggest challenge is to reskill engineers to take up these challenges quickly.
Speaking on the occasion, Latha Chembrakalam, Head – Technical Centre India, Continental, said the industry will not focus on one technology; it is always going through ‘co-creation by collaboration’. Streams such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, cloud computing and 5G cannot be separated from one other, as all these elements have to coexist in the new area. It starts with the first step through increasing collaboration with the academia, which can nurture ideas, besides exchanging the expertise.
Prof K Madhava Krishna, Professor and Head of Robotics Research Centre and The Kohli Center for Intelligent Systems, IIIT Hyderabad, said it is necessary to reorganise the coursework such that the students are ready to go, maybe even by the second or third year, and spend two years working on these problems.
Understanding the local requirement, readiness, and maturity of the technology available in the country are vital ingredients, said Pamela Tikku, Chief Business Officer, ICAT. She said there’s hardly anything happening in the domain of industry-academia collaboration in the country, more so for the development of the autonomous vehicle, which calls for multidisciplinary science.
From a MathWorks’ point of view, Rashmi Gopala Rao, Industry Manager – Automotive, MathWorks, said it is a great chance for regulatory bodies and OEMs to use technology to make roads safer. The country has a very vibrant community of start-ups, and there lies a huge opportunity despite challenges. With ADAS already seeing the light of day, AD probably adds a fair chance to the Indian automotive ecosystem, she added.
Technology Development
Meanwhile, talking about the potential to develop technologies in India, Dr Venugopal said the awareness is steadily growing. Still, there is a mind-set that this is all very high tech, and it will take some time to learn and start working in that space. The real focus for innovation should be to pick and choose the right combination of technologies, which will be robust enough to keep the product very affordable. Developing technology at the right cost is key, he added.
To drive the volumes for technologies such as ADAS and others, “we need to be at the forefront in customising the solution. There are also the country specific local needs to be considered like an animal or a pothole detection or traffic discipline, we have the Indian environment conditions. Therefore, we need to have very different kind of innovation,” Chembrakalam recommended.
However, the challenge is to look at containing the cost. The positive point of the talent pool in India is that they are quite suited for the development of ADAS technology. So, it is necessary to think a little bit different and look at options on up-skilling and re-skilling,” she added.
Tikku opined that ICAT could incubate these young engineers or start-ups and handhold them in developing certain technologies. Out of 100, maybe four or five will become successful, but the rest will gain experience, and it will not go waste. She said ICAT is looking at creating an Innovation Academy under ASPIRE, creating special modules for training in the areas that are not available readymade.
“We are in a strategic position, because we are not a manufacturer of any technology, we are a neutral body. We can bring all the stakeholders together and bring out certain training modules, provide skilling and also specialised hand holding for such technology development,” she added.
Rao said the need of the hour is a T-skill set, which can provide the breadth of the domain and go deep into one domain. “We follow our three pillars: investing for workforce mobility; investing heavily in simulation and helping write better software, and include automation,” she said.
Industry-Academy Preparation
While Professor Krishna expressed that the exposure to the problem needs to come very early in the curriculum, Dr Venugopal propagated the clear need for collaboration. When multiple parties – industry, academia and government research labs – are involved, there is always a possibility of repetition and misalignment, making people stay away from this and try to own everything and do it within their four walls, which is not working.
Therefore, there is a need for a clear 10-year technology roadmap to get over these concerns. “The roadmap for India is going to be very different from the roadmap for the US of the Europe, because we have the opportunity to leapfrog some of the intermediate technologies, and directly go for the latest. Organisations like ICAT can actually lead this kind of effort bringing industry, academia and government labs together to build a roadmap. The government can use this roadmap to channelise all the research funding, so that as a series of projects are funded, the technology will grow along the roadmap and become practically viable,” Dr Venugopal said.
To this, Tikku reverted, stating that under ASPIRE, ICAT has created 18 sub-boards with a clear mandate to create a technology roadmap for their own areas. However, “we are not getting the right mass of people to come and collaborate and define this roadmap. Unfortunately, industry is not coming forward,” she bemoaned.
ICAT’s hands are tied as government questions them on the reasons for not bringing projects from the industry. The industry can leverage the government’s schemes, including the PLI, to take this forward. “We need a top down approach in this case,” she added.
Much homework is needed to prepare young engineers to take up work that Continental focuses on. “At this point of time, to really get an industry ready engineer is next to impossible; we will have to really look at joint curriculum development,” Chembrakalam said.
Replying to Tikku’s view, Chembrakalam said it has a lot to do with the mind-set. “I think we all have been used to being successful alone, standalone entities being successful in the industry,” she said. Instead, it has to be collaboration, working without boundaries. Seamless integration of academies, industry research, everything has to happen, she averred.
On the global best practices that can ensure meaningful collaborations between the industry and academy, Chembrakalam said, the framework has to start from the industry to communicate its requirements, which is poor at this stage. Second, the strategy leaders have to come together and define this kind of framework. Thirdly, a much stronger collaboration framework is needed, which involves topics and the kind of IPs that can be generated, and selection of academy. Finally, it is essential to discuss how to influence the university's curriculum, she added.
Venugopal said, “When technology is growing exponentially, we should not be thinking incrementally, but think exponentially. The kinds of problems that we define, to collaborate and solve should not be 2X or 3X. Improvements should be 10X and 100X.” He recommended bringing faculty from the universities to spend time with the industry and make them work as part of the product development team for a couple of months. Besides, he insisted on giving this exchange a cross immersive experience so that they could understand each other and work together.
Professor Krishna said in developed countries, the professor is almost like a CEO and has a well-established pyramidal structure of researchers, which works well. The constant trouble with the Indian ecosystem is that students always want to go abroad and do not think of the Indian University as the final parking place to spend six to seven years.
Tikku asked why the academic institute can't have industry-sponsored chairs or researchers on the industry's payroll to ensure employability. This way, the talent can be groomed and returned to the industry.
Talking about the noticeable gap between the industry and government, Chembrakalam said the industry has to make certain statements on the kind of roadmap to align with the government and research institutions. “We need to come together more often, not only for this panel discussion, but in the real life, and discuss the issues that we have,” she added.