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The ASE-Team

You will be guided through your Bachelor Project by an experienced team of (MSc) students, professors and researchers. Based on your choice of topic and research question, you will be matched with a domain expert in your field of research.

Organizing Team​

The organizing team runs the project organization as well as providing all guidance for software & hardware questions. All communication goes through them (ase@vu.nl), they are your first point of contact and advise your supervisor on your progress, academic attitude and executed work.

  • Max Gallup, on-site supervisor, lead hardware engineer
  • Elias Groot, on-site supervisor, lead software engineer

Domain Experts​

Your entry to the research domain you are interested in. After being accepted, your group will be paired with a domain expert who will be your assigned first reader and grade of your thesis. They will also answer domain & research related questions during your scheduled meetings.

  • Dr. Natalia Silvis-Cividjian, Autonomous Systems and Software Testing
    • ASE research interests:
      • Research in computer vision and illumination conditions
      • Applying machine learning techniques for trajectory planning
      • Autonomous driving software testing
  • Dr. Ivano Malavolta, Energy-Efficient Software and Robotics
    • ASE research interests:
      • Application of architectural tactics for improving the energy efficiency and runtime performance of the ASE/Rover
  • Dr. Erik Van der Kouwe, Systems security
    • ASE research interests:
      • Bus hardening and firmware fuzzing of the ASE software framework
      • Vulnerability fuzzing and taint analysis in the web interface of the ASE software framework
      • Researching the tradeoff between hardening authorization access of hardware control of modules and low latency requirements of robotics systems
  • Drs. Kees Verstoep, Internet of Things
    • ASE research interests:
      • Localization using ultra wide band sensors
  • Dr. Ilias Gerostathopoulos, Software and Sustainability
    • ASE research interests:
      • Creating a simulator (digital twin) for the ASE/Rover
  • Dr. Atze van der Ploeg, Software and Systems Engineering
    • ASE research interests:
      • Performing a system-wide analysis of the ASE software framework for latency reduction
      • Comparing and benchmarking different approaches to the ASE software framework to analyze performance gain

Key Contributors​

Without them, ASE would not exist.

  • Dr. Natalia Silvis-Cividjian, project supervisor
  • Niels Althuisius, technical support
  • Eduardo Lira, BSc, software engineer
  • Hugo van Wezenbeek, MSc, hardware engineer
  • The Electro-Mechanical development group
  • The Fine-Mechanical Instrumentation development group

History and Attributions​

ASE is built on the BSc course Project Autonomous Driving, taught by dr. Natalia Silvis-Cividjian since 2019. This course allowed selected students to deepen and apply their knowledge to craft and race an autonomous vehicle in the NXP cup. All current organizers and contributors were once students in this project.

Hugo van Wezenbeek working on the hardware design of the Rover

After qualifying first place in Eindhoven, but finishing 10th place in Bucharest in 2023, the original ASE team (Eduardo, Hugo, Max, Elias, Niels and Natalia) decided to build the autonomous Rover from the ground up, with fully custom hardware and software.

Hardware design and development was led by Max Gallup and Hugo van Wezenbeek while all software design and development was done by Elias Groot and Eduardo Lira. All electronics are designed by Niels Althuisius. The new Rover is almost fully engineered and produced in-house at the VU with support of the electro-mechanical and fine-mechanical labs at the VU. And the work paid off: in 2024, the team finished first place in the qualifiers in Eindhoven and first place in the finals in Hamburg, becoming champions of Europe, the Middle-East and Africa.

Hugo van Wezenbeek working on the hardware design of the Rover

We now supply students with the hardware and software framework, and knowledge and expertise to allow them to research and tackle their own challenges. The focus does not lie on racing anymore, but the Rover certainly still has speed enough for students willing to compete in the NXP cup on behalf of ASE. The ASE project has been organized by Max and Elias since its start in 2024, under supervision of Natalia. For the 2025 edition, we also work together with five new domain experts to broaden the topics researched at ASE.