AUTONOMOUS DRIVING ENGINEERING

Course Content

The curriculum in Autonomous Driving Engineering (ADE) is part of the Master’s Degree Course in Electronic Engineering for Intelligent Vehicles (EEIV). This curriculum integrates teaching activities belonging until the academic year 2021/22 in the Master’s Degree Course in Advanced Automotive Electronic Engineering (AAEE) with subjects and teaching activities specifically focused on Autonomous Driving; the specific aim of the ADE curriculum is to educate future engineers with a solid knowledge of the methods and tools used in the development of intelligent transportation systems. In particular this includes knowledge about software and electronic systems widely used in intelligent vehicles for: perceiving the environment, processing sensor data, planning driving actions and maneuvers, and driving a vehicle. 

The ADE curriculum has a duration of two academic years. During the first year, taught in the Bologna campus, courses will be offered in order to strengthen the student background knowledge on topics such as “embedded” and “real-time” electronic systems, automotive sensors, automatic control, vehicular radio communications, machine vision, and deep learning. The second year, taught in the Parma campus, complements, and specializes the first, exposing students to electronic technologies and devices for automotive systems and also offering various elective courses on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, vehicles path planning and control, sensors for perception, simulation environments and HMIs, and machine learning for autonomous driving.

The number of positions is limited to a maximum of 25 students. Admissions are based on merit and interviews evaluating motivations and skills. Teaching is entirely delivered in English.

The international teaching staff of MUNER includes highly experienced lecturers and professionals. The contents of the courses have been defined together with the contribution of the partner companies to ensure that training is in line with current requirements of the labour market. The program requires student participation in numerous laboratory activities either on campus or on the premises of industrial partners, in line with a “learning by doing” approach. It also includes industrial internships and lab-based thesis preparation activities carried out following a “project work” approach.

Teaching Program

The first academic year is located in the Bologna Campus while the second academic year is located in the Parma Campus.

Internship and Career Perspectives

The educational path has been designed in strong cooperation with companies operating in the automotive sector to allow a seamless insertion of the graduate in high profile roles in the research, development and manufacturing environments dealing with vehicles and automotive technologies.

At the end of second academic year, the program also includes internships in private companies and lab-based thesis preparation activities carried out following a “project work” approach. Moreover, throughout the year students also attend seminars with industrial and international speakers, and factory visits.

Graduates of the ADE curriculum will be able to deal with concepts, methods and architectures used to enable advanced driver assistance systems up to fully autonomous driving.  They will also be able to participate in concept development, specification definition, design and implementation of end-user safety systems, intelligent transportation systems based on perception devices, algorithms, and planning and control strategies

The broad-spectrum view on Information Technologies makes the graduate in “Electronic Engineering for Intelligent Vehicles” an ideal candidate to play the role of project manager in the conception, design, production, and maintenance of complex systems in which the overall functionality depends on the interaction of multiple heterogeneous systems.