← Master's thesis
Project · Electronics

Main PCB for the next-generation Eira UGV

Background
Eira Systems is a Swedish start-up developing electrically powered unmanned ground vehicles for logistics, CASEVAC and other supporting missions in demanding off-road environments. Eira has developed and tested the full-scale Eira-X prototype and has now received a contract to develop the framework for a second-generation platform together with a major Swedish defence actor. Eira is based at The Yard in Lindholmen, Gothenburg.

Our main PCB connects the microcontroller, CAN bus, safety circuit, radio receiver and lights. It was not designed with our single-board computer (SBC), an Nvidia Jetson AGX Orin, in mind. Because our vehicles are used for many different tasks, new electronics also need to be easy to add.

Goal description
The goal of the thesis is to design, build and test the next-generation main PCB. It should be designed around our SBC, be robust enough for off-road use, and have easy interfaces so new electronics can be added quickly. The work may focus on:

  • Power: our DC-DC converters integrated on the board, powering the SBC from the traction battery and surviving voltage dips
  • Safety and recovery: an improved hardware safety chain, remote power cycling of each subsystem, and easy diagnostics
  • Plug-and-play expansion over CAN: new modules are detected and configured automatically
  • Sensor sync: prepared for hardware-synchronised cameras, lidar and IMU
  • Custom compute board: our own carrier board for the Jetson or another SBC, or a dedicated board for hardware video encoding

The thesis can be broad or go deep into one topic, and we would love for you to bring your own ideas. Either way, we want the board to end up on the real vehicle, not only as a design.

We have a full-scale UGV you can test on, and we are developing the next generation right now. We buy the components, PCB manufacturing and anything else you need.

NOTE: We have a few other proposals up in other areas also.

Student background
We require applicants to be curious, positive and ambitious and, because of our industry, citizens of a NATO or EU member state. We assess applications on the following, in order of priority (attaching something for one of them is enough):

  1. Projects (school, hobby or work) in a related area
  2. Your personality and motivation for this project
  3. Merits
  4. Knowledge (your academic background and relevant courses)

Apply preferably before 1 November to andreas.munck@eirasystems.com.