YAPE, the autonomous driving robot made in Politecnico

This robot walks alone, but behind the scenes there is the whole University and a number of companies. Its name is YAPE, and it is an autonomous vehicle on two wheels designed for deliveries that is able to move between sidewalks, passers-by and traffic lights.

YAPE is able to carry drinks, hot or cold food, but also medicines as the internal compartment can be air-conditioned. It is designed to move easily between the streets of Italian cities between alleys, rails and cobblestones on its two tilting wheels, which are able of absorbing shocks and changes of route.

Its mission is to deliver what is requested to users' homes in the shortest time possible, bypassing logistical problems and road congestion at the same time.

It was conceived by a team of engineers from Politecnico di Milano within the MOVE research group , who designed and built it in collaboration with the e-Novia business factory, (we talked with the factory on MAP # 7).

“YAPE has been designed and engineered to move in tight spaces and to move on pavement, which requires planning its trajectories and knowing its location with centimeter accuracy”, says to RaiPlay Digital Filippo Parravicini , Alumnus in Information Engineering and PhD student at Politecnico, who has been working on the project for four years.

Together with him Luca Mozzarelli , researcher and Alumnus in Automation and Control Engineering, who adds: "The very interesting thing about this project is that it is a platform that allows us to go and work on everything round on the aspects of autonomous driving, without having to deal with the complications of a real car. "

Vincenzo Russi , co-founder and CEO of e-novia and Alumnus del Poli, in the Politecnico di Milano Alumni Magazine talks about the path of integration of skills and sector that were fundamental to get to YAPE:

“The products we are working on today present complexities and technological problems that are impossible to solve with a single form of engineering, design or architecture. For this reason, here in e-Novia we have Alumni of Politecnico, , able of governing multiple technologies.
Graduates in design, are able to become experts in economics, finance and marketing; they go beyond their specific competences to understand phenomena in other disciplines. Politecnico is shaping people that are going to be invaluable in the future".

Credits header: e-novia