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KAUST, Partners Develop Self-driving Mobility Platform

The long-term vision of the partnership is to have an onging, collaborative platform for research exchange to improve self-driving technologies
The long-term vision of the partnership is to have an onging, collaborative platform for research exchange to improve self-driving technologies
    Thuwal - Asharq Al-Awsat
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KAUST, Partners Develop Self-driving Mobility Platform

The long-term vision of the partnership is to have an onging, collaborative platform for research exchange to improve self-driving technologies
The long-term vision of the partnership is to have an onging, collaborative platform for research exchange to improve self-driving technologies

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Intel and Brightskies have collaborated to develop self-driving mobility platform with launching REDD, a strategic initiative that puts research innovations in artificial intelligence to the test in a proof-of-concept, self-driving vehicle.

REDD is the outcome of a strategic collaborative initiative between KAUST Smart, Intel and Brightskies to raise the bar of the autonomous mobility challenge by converting a conventional car into a self-driving car with integrated artificial intelligence (AI) software.

The long-term vision of the partnership is to have an onging, collaborative platform for research exchange to improve self-driving technologies - goals what part of the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030.

The three entities have combined their efforts, leveraging KAUST expertise and utilizing its campus as a living lab for this pilot project. KAUST also participated in the design of the user experience. This project builds on prior “firsts” in automation at KAUST.

In partnership with international autonomous vehicles makers, KAUST was the first institution in the Kingdom to test autonomous bus shuttles on its campus, and extended autonomous research to drones and self-driving lockers to test last mile delivery.

Brightskies has been the main developer of the self-driving system, powered by Intel® NUC platforms.

“The self-driving mobility platform provides a capability to develop an ecosystem of talent, research and applied solutions within the region. It's a great step towards tackling self-driving challenges. It's also a platform that allows new and innovative ideas to grow,” said director of KAUST Smart Mohamed Abdel-Aal.

The KAUST vehicle will use a Beta version of BrightDrive, a self-driving system developed in-house by Brightskies and initially launched in 2020. KAUST researchers are expected to use this vehicle as an innovation platform in order to deploy and test new techniques for a better road experience. BrightDrive contains features required for the safety of the autonomous trip and optimal user experience, including environment sensing and perception, centimeter level localization, and high-definition (HD) mapping, path planning and motion control.

Researchers will have access to data gathered by the self-driving car to help fine-tune their existing models. Data coming from an actual car tested on a road instead of from a synthetically created scenario will advance research and, in turn, vehicle responsiveness toward the goal of making self-driving cars efficient, reliable and safe.

“The advanced processing power and seamless integration of sensors over the Intel® NUC could make this innovation a reality,” said Hossam Yahia, vice president of autonomous driving at Brightskies.

The KAUST campus is an ideal test site because it represents a small city with the kinds of diverse driving scenarios that a self-driving developer needs, including standard road features such as traffic signs, traffic lights and driving laws that prioritize the safety of humans, pedestrians and bicyclists. To date the vehicle has been traveling through the small city day and night, encountering unexpected scenarios, and the advanced AI system has been successfully able to detect the environment and react in a safe and efficient way.

“Intel is very excited to collaborate with KAUST and Brightskies on AI developments for autonomous driving — a collaboration that we believe is aligned with and will support Saudi’s Vision 2030,” said General Manager of Intel, Saudi Arabia Ahmad Al Abduljabbar said.

“The pilot project will also enrich the local research talent with a customizable platform for their algorithms, which will prepare them to play a role in the global automotive industry,” he added.

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NASA Astronauts Return to Earth after Drawn-out Mission in Space

Support teams work around a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft shortly after it landed with NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aboard in the water off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, USA, 18 March 2025. EPA/NASA/Keegan Barber
Support teams work around a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft shortly after it landed with NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aboard in the water off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, USA, 18 March 2025. EPA/NASA/Keegan Barber
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NASA Astronauts Return to Earth after Drawn-out Mission in Space

Support teams work around a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft shortly after it landed with NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aboard in the water off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, USA, 18 March 2025. EPA/NASA/Keegan Barber
Support teams work around a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft shortly after it landed with NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aboard in the water off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, USA, 18 March 2025. EPA/NASA/Keegan Barber

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule on Tuesday with a soft splashdown off Florida's coast, nine months after their faulty Boeing Starliner craft upended what was to be a week-long stay on the International Space Station.
Their return caps a protracted space mission that was fraught with uncertainty and technical troubles, turning a rare instance of NASA's contingency planning - and the latest failures of Starliner - into a global and political spectacle, Reuters reported.
Wilmore and Williams, two veteran NASA astronauts and retired US Navy test pilots, had launched into space as Starliner's first crew in June for what was expected to be an eight-day test mission. But issues with Starliner's propulsion system led to cascading delays to their return home, culminating in a NASA decision to fold them into its crew rotation schedule and return them on a SpaceX craft this year.
On Tuesday morning, Wilmore and Williams strapped inside their Crew Dragon spacecraft along with two other astronauts and undocked from the ISS at 1.05 a.m. ET (0505 GMT) to embark on a 17-hour trip to Earth.
The four-person crew, formally part of NASA's Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission, plunged through Earth's atmosphere, using its heatshield and two sets of parachutes to slow its orbital speed of 17,000 mph (27,359 kph) to a soft 17 mph at splashdown, which occurred at 5:57 p.m. ET some 50 miles off Florida's Gulf Coast under clear skies.
"What a ride," NASA astronaut Nick Hague, the Crew-9 mission commander inside the Dragon capsule, told mission control moments after splashing down. "I see a capsule full of grins, ear to ear."
The astronauts will be flown on a NASA plane to their crew quarters at the space agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston for a few days of routine health checks before NASA flight surgeons say they can go home to their families.
"They will get some well-deserved time off, well-deserved time with their families," NASA's Commercial Crew Program chief Steve Stich told reporters after the splashdown. "It's been a long time for them."
POLITICAL SPECTACLE
The mission captured the attention of US President Donald Trump, who upon taking office in January called for a quicker return of Wilmore and Williams and alleged, without evidence, that former President Joe Biden "abandoned" them on the ISS for political reasons.
NASA acted on Trump's demand by moving Crew-9's replacement mission up sooner, the agency's ISS chief Joel Montalbano said Tuesday. The agency had swapped a delayed SpaceX capsule for one that would be ready sooner and sped through its methodical safety review process to heed the president's call.
Trump told Fox News on Tuesday that Wilmore and Williams will visit the Oval Office after they recover from their mission.
Wilmore earlier this month told reporters on a call from the ISS that he did not believe NASA's decision to keep them on the ISS until Crew-10's arrival had been affected by politics under the Biden administration.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a close adviser to Trump, had echoed Trump's call for an earlier return, adding the Biden administration spurned a SpaceX offer to provide a dedicated Dragon rescue mission last year.
NASA officials have said the two astronauts had to remain on the ISS to maintain adequate staffing levels and it did not have the budget or the operational need to send a dedicated rescue spacecraft. Crew Dragon flights cost between $100 million to $150 million.
Crew Dragon is the only US spacecraft capable of flying people in orbit. Boeing had hoped Starliner would compete with the SpaceX capsule before the mission with Wilmore and Williams threw its development future into uncertainty.
Stich said on Tuesday that Starliner might need to fly another uncrewed flight - which would be its third such mission and fourth test overall - before it routinely carries US astronauts.
Boeing, which congratulated the astronauts' return on X, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
286 DAYS IN SPACE
The ISS, about 254 miles in altitude, is a football field-sized research lab that has been housed continuously by international crews of astronauts for nearly 25 years, a key platform of science diplomacy managed primarily by the US and Russia.
Swept up in NASA's routine astronaut rotation schedule, Wilmore and Williams worked on roughly 150 science experiments aboard the station until their replacement crew launched last week.
The pair logged 286 days in space on the mission - longer than the average six-month ISS mission length, but far short of US record holder Frank Rubio, whose 371 days in space ending in 2023 were the unexpected result of a coolant leak on a Russian spacecraft.
Living in space for months can affect the human body in multiple ways, from muscle atrophy to possible vision impairment.
Williams, capping her third spaceflight, has tallied 608 cumulative days in space, the second most for any US astronaut after Peggy Whitson's 675 days. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set the world record last year at 878 cumulative days.
"We came prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short," Wilmore told reporters from space earlier this month.
"That's what your nation's human spaceflight program's all about," he said. "Planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that."