VESNA-based Intelligent Motorhome

Jozef Stefan Institute and Adria Mobil, one of the leading European manufacturers of caravans and motorhomes, are collaboratively developing and implementing a prototype of an intelligent motorhome. The novel concept, which is referred to as Adria moving lab, focuses on hardware enablers and intelligent software that automates the motorhome and improves user experience. The goal is to build a smart motorhome that understands user needs, autonomously adapts to its users and environment, and consequently improves the comfort, safety and energy efficiency. The motorhome is equipped with multiple sensor-actutor units based on VESNA hardware platform that connected into a wired bus network, gather the data and forwarding it to software for real-time data analysis based on the QMiner data analytics platform. The latter is compiled for the BeagleBone platform and AI reasoning. The new integrated technology upgrades an existing service and enables smarter use of energy sources and more flexible control of heating, lighting, water supply etc.

One of the main goals of this set-up is to improve the overall energy efficiency of the vehicle, thus making it autonomous over significantly longer periods of time. Several VESNAs are placed to monitor the energy consumption of various devices and also on the main power lines. Consumption patterns are learnt and, by using also alternative data such as temperature and illuminance, the system is able to predict how long the batteries will last with the current batteries.