Why it's needed

Nova is an undergraduate research team under Professor Justin Ruths developing a research-focused and open source self-driving vehicle. While companies have made great strides in autonomous driving, it has become difficult for academic research to participate due to the proprietary nature of the software that runs these systems. Nova aims to provide research groups with a solution that can not only be understood and operated by an academic research lab, but also be deployed in real-world test vehicles.

Who we are

The Nova team is purposefully composed of undergraduates. The project offers undergraduates an unparalleled opportunity to engage with theory, algorithms, and their practical implementation on real systems and hardware. Students investigate technical literature to find appropriate methods, evaluate and integrate community libraries, and develop code to implement new algorithms. Students must collaborate, coordinate, and project plan in multidisciplinary teams on interdependent and open-ended tasks that span many timescales.

What we do

More about our work and processes.

Self-driving software stack

Our ROS2-based stack pulls together conventional and cutting edge methods with an eye for methods that work well without a lot of parameter fiddling.

Vehicle Hardware & Firmware

Our vehicles, Hail Bopp and 1811, allow students to work with next-generation sensors, such as 128-scan lidar and 4D radar.

Outreach & Education

An imporant part of our mission is educating and exciting members of our community. Please get in touch if you see an opportunity for us participate in an event!

Want to get involved?

The door is always open for tinkerers and people with passion!

Roadmap for 2025-2026

The 2024-2025 year saw a huge growth in our perception capabilities. We have also added robust localization techniques to remove reliance on highly accurate GPS and move towards the ability to drive both purposefully and aimlessly. In the 2025-2026 subteams will be organized around our main priorities:

Perception

Focused on consolidating, reducing redundancy, and streamlining our many perception capabilities, adding new ones as needed. Making these available to other subteams.

Behavior

Focused on achieving key driving behaviors, roughly in this order: Cruising, Following, Intersections, Lane Change, Overtaking. Identifying what information is needed (from perception) and how to guarantee safe behavior.

System

Focused on the base capabilities that make the car move (localization, mapping, route and path generation) as well as safety. Also responsible for system wide cleanup and dependency maintenance.

HailBopp

We've had to do some major surgery to the main vehicle and there is a lot to be done to replace the OEM microcontrollers with our own in-house solutions.

1811

Meant to mimic HailBopp capabilities in a 1/3-scale platform, all elements are here, but need to be assembled. The drive-by-wire for steering is a top priority.