Ireland – Vehicle conversion kits – Drive-by-Wire System for Autonomous Vehicle Research

Summary

1. Future Mobility Campus Ireland - Company Profile Future Mobility Campus Ireland (FMCI) was founded to create and deliver future mobility testbed facilities supporting research, development and innovation in Autonomous Connected Electric Shared Vehicles (ACES), including Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) and Advanced Aerial Mobility (AAM) in Ireland. FMCI partners include leading Irish automotive and technology organisations across SMEs, MNCs, RPOs and IOTs, with support from local authorities and state agencies. FMCI operates CAV and AAM test facilities in real-world settings, enabling technology companies and researchers to test and enhance their innovations. The facilities include a road network retrofitted with interconnected sensing and telecommunications technologies, fully accessible and controlled through a dedicated control centre. FMCI supports the ecosystem of companies developing, manufacturing and testing products and services related to CAV and AAM. The system under this tender will support FMCI Research and Development activities in Autonomous Driving and Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems. 2. Purpose and Scope FMCI invites tenderers for the supply, installation, integration, commissioning, acceptance testing, training and support of a complete Drive-by-Wire (DBW) system for an autonomous vehicle research platform. FMCI has not pre-selected a specific vehicle make or model. Tenderers shall nominate a suitable right-hand-drive battery-electric vehicle platform that, in standard production configuration, is road-legal and eligible for registration and normal public-road use in Ireland, compatible with the proposed DBW solution, and reasonably available through Irish motor dealerships. The objective is to select a technically suitable and commercially viable platform, considering the DBW solution, vehicle cost and availability, and integration risk. The DBW system will support autonomous-driving research using ROS 2 and Autoware on FMCI's NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin platform. International suppliers are eligible to tender, subject to applicable Irish and EU import, tax, safety and procurement requirements. The vehicle is not part of the contract awarded under this RFT. Following contract award, FMCI will procure the nominated vehicle platform separately in accordance with its procurement obligations. 3. Required Tender Outcome The successful tenderer shall provide a complete solution enabling FMCI to: * source a compatible right-hand-drive battery-electric passenger vehicle in Ireland; * electronically control steering, propulsion, braking, gear selection and direction indicators using the vehicle OEM actuation systems; * retain safe and immediate manual-driver override; * provide an emergency-stop and defined fail-safe architecture; * perform controlled low-speed operation using a remote operator controller; * communicate with the DBW system from the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin using a documented ROS 2 interface; * install, deploy and maintain the supplier-provided ROS 2 interface on AArch64/ARM64; * commission and accept the DBW installation using objective functional and software-interface tests; and * operate and maintain the system without undisclosed mandatory subscriptions, software dependencies or unsupported proprietary interfaces. FMCI will perform the final mapping between the supplier's ROS 2 DBW interface and the Autoware vehicle-control stack internally.

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