WATERLOO — A self-driving golf cart rolled around the University of Waterloo campus Tuesday and into the record books as the first autonomous vehicle to drive itself over a publicly accessible roadway in Canada.

The self-driving shuttle was developed by Varden Labs, a startup co-founded by two second-year students in mechatronics engineering — Michael Skupien (the mechanical lead) and Alex Rodrigues (the software lead).

UW president Feridun Hamdullahpur sat in the autonomous vehicle along with Rodrigues as it completed a circuit around the Ring Road. Skupien provided commentary to the crowd of proud parents, curious onlookers and media who followed the short trip via a Wi-Fi video link.

The small crowd applauded as the shuttle slowed to a stop after making the historic drive. Skupien, Rodrigues and the university said this is the first time a self-driving vehicle has run on a public roadway anywhere in this country.

Google is testing self-driving cars on roads in California and Nevada. Two other U.S. states, Michigan and Florida, have passed laws allowing driverless vehicles on their roads for testing.

Google has worked on the technology for about 10 years and aims to make driverless cars available to the public in 2020.

Skupien said Varden Labs has no intention of competing against Google, Apple and carmakers that are working on autonomous cars.

"We want to go into a smaller subset of the problem, which is autonomous shuttles," he said.

"Rather than going on government-regulated roads where you are going at highway speeds and all that, we want to run on private roads such as university campuses, resorts, retirement communities, that kind of thing."

That way Varden Labs will not have to wait for regulations to govern autonomous vehicles on public roadways, Skupien said. The regulations could be five to 10 years in the making.

The Varden Labs shuttle has a top speed of 20 kilometres an hour and stops automatically when pedestrians or other obstacles move into its path.

Skupien and Rodrigues worked for about four months to outfit a golf cart with a laser, global positioning system and sensors; write algorithms that control everything; and integrate the hardware and software with the engine, brakes and steering mechanism.

Before their shuttle made the trip around the campus, it was taking people for short rides around a route on a large, green lawn.

"It's extremely, extremely conservative. Most self-driving vehicles are," Rodrigues said as the shuttle carried passengers over the grass. "It actually stops 15 metres out if you stand in the path. It also sees around corners."

Skupien lifts the lid that covers the battery bank and explains what he and Rodrigues added to the golf cart.

"On the inside there you can see a computer. It runs Linux so it is an actual computer, and it interfaces with all of our motor controllers and sensors," Skupien said.

A custom-made roof covers the golf cart and supports a GPS antenna, GPS receiver, a floodlight for running at night and a safety light that blinks when the vehicle is running autonomously. On the front, protected by steel guards, is a laser distance scanner. The vehicle also has a Wi-Fi router.

"This is what actually measures all of our surroundings and figures out where everything is," Skupien said of the laser.

Hamdullahpur, the university president is a vocal supporter of the tech entrepreneurs coming out of the institution, speaking at pitch competitions and offering his office's support. Skupien and Rodrigues have his attention. He told Skupien on Tuesday to contact his office directly for support in advancing the prototype.

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"This is cool," Hamdullahpur said. "The confidence of these young engineers is so impressive."

Varden Labs won $25,000 in the most recent Velocity Fund Finals pitch competition and will soon be working out of the Velocity Foundry in downtown Kitchener. Velocity is the university's support program for startups.

"What we are probably going to do is continue it part-time, and once we are out of university or in fourth year we will work on it full-time," Skupien said.