Stanford University robot car
p2pnet.net news:- Stanford University says it’ll be entering a robot car in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge.
Named Junior, that’s it on the right, complete with its current sensor array and race day livery.
In 2005, ‘Stanley’ and the Stanford Racing Team won $2 million dollars for being the first team to complete the 132 mile DARPA Grand Challenge course in California’s Mojave Desert.
Stanley finished in just under 6 hours 54 minutes and averaged over 19 mph on the course.
Junior is a 2006 Passat wagon whose steering, throttle and brakes have all been modified by engineers at the Volkswagen of America Electronics Research Lab to be completely computer-controllable.
“An important difference between Junior and Stanley is that Junior must be aware of fast-moving objects all around it, while Stanley only had to grapple with still objects in front of it,” says the Stanford racing team.
Junior’s sensors are therefore much more sophisticated and include a range-finding laser array that spins to provide a 360-degree, three-dimensional view of the surrounding environment in near real-time, accompanied by a device with six video cameras that see all around the car.
“Junior also uses bumpermounted lasers, radar, Global Positioning System receivers and inertial navigation hardware to collect data about where it is and what is around,”says Stanford, adding:
“Because Junior collects much more data than Stanley did, its computational hardware must be commensurately more powerful, says Montemerlo. Using Intel Core 2 Duo processors – each chip includes multiple processing unitsââ¬Juniorââ¬â¢s ââ¬Åbrainâ⬠is about four times more powerful than Stanleyââ¬â¢s.
“But what makes Junior truly autonomous will be its software, which is the focus of about a dozen students, faculty and researchers at the SAIL. Modules for tasks such as perception, mapping and planning give Junior the machine-learning ability to improve its driving and to convert raw sensor data into a cohesive understanding of its situation.”
New software development began last fall. Montemerlo has been testing some of the teamââ¬â¢s software modules in simulated traffic situations since the beginning of the year.
The race starts on November 3.
Also See:
2007 DARPA Urban Challenge – Stanford teamââ¬â¢s next-generation robot joins DARPA Urban Challenge, February 17, 2007
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February 20th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Gives the word ‘crash’ a whole new meaning doesn’t it?
I can also imagine what kind of stuff is gonna happen when people who have had kids (there are some people i refuse to dignify with the title parent) send their kids off to school in a robot controlled car with no adult supervision.
At least until the first major pileup at a school drop off point happens anyway. And who would be responsible in that case? 30 cars have all become involved in an multi vehcile accident. All of them are controlled by robots. Who is legally liable? The owners of the cars? The makers of the robots? The people who last serviced the cars or robots?
I see a legal minefield headed our way, and it’s a biggun.