Carnegie Mellon wins DARPA Urban Challenge

[theotherguy]

DARPA held its Urban Challenge two days ago, where robotic cars had to race unaided through 60 miles of simulated city streets with real pedestrians, other drivers, and all had to obey traffic laws. The cars had to deliver a package to several locations, parking in nearly-full parking lots and making several complicated lane changes and turns, all without any human intervention. Carnegie Mellon (the school I want to attend), finished first, Stanford second and Virginia Tech third.

A robot racing team from Carnegie Mellon University beat out a rival from Stanford University over the weekend to win DARPA's Urban Challenge, a 60-mile race involving self-guided vehicles that were judged on both time and how well they performed.

The Carnegie Mellon team, known as Tartan Racing, took home the US$2 million first prize, while the Stanford Racing Team grabbed a $1 million check for finishing second. Team Victor Tango, which was made up of faculty and students from Virginia Tech, received $500,000 for taking third place.

In all, 11 so-called autonomous vehicles raced at the abandoned George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif., in the finals of the Urban Challenge, which pit the driverless cars against one another on a course that challenged the vehicles and their self-guidance systems to find their way through 60 miles of urban streets with multiple lanes, traffic circles and four-way stops.

This bodes well for the future of autonomous battle vehicles, as well as consumer vehicles with the ability to drive people autonomously. All thats left is to improve speed and performance, and decrease the size of on-board sensors and computers.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,139277-c,artificialintelligence/article.html

 

[CyberPitz]

That's pretty awesome. I wish I could see it in action!

 

[Link]

There was a video of last years, about an hour long. Anyone know of one for this years?

 

[TechnoHippyChic]

Here's a short one of the Carnegie Mellon vehicle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SfaCkhhQT8

 

[Bad^Hat]

Yeah, but which team won for highest mortality rate?

Robots aren't robots unless they're killing shit.

 

[TechnoHippyChic]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M4_XZ3FLHw