The Indian Express reported on September 16 that researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and IT major Wipro Ltd will work together to create a self-driving car for India with an expected to roll out by of March 2020. The partnership to build the autonomous vehicles for Indian road conditions, which varies starkly from Western economies, is an extension of Wipro's plans to build an autonomous car using data for roads in Europe and the US.

“We are working on some cutting edge algorithms for Indian conditions. Earlier whatever we worked on was user data from Europe and America but we want to do something for India. We cannot use the systems that we built for the other data sets because the conditions here are unique,’’ said Dr Ramachandra Budihal, Wipro’s head for AI, autonomous systems and robotics to the Indian Express. 

“It is a greenfield design — everything has been designed from scratch. We are not taking a Toyota or a Honda and retrofitting. We are designing our own electric vehicle and then putting all the systems inside. It is a concept autonomous vehicle,’’ added Budihal, who is based on the IISc campus with a team of 18 engineers to build the car.

Building autonomous cars for Indian road has been a unique challenge of its own, since Indian drivers lacked the lane discipline of their American and European counterpart, while the roads itself is filled with unexpected potholes, castles, and other human activities.