DARPA driverless vehicles to race at Grand Prix of Long Beach
Click above for high-res gallery of the DARPA Urban Grand Challenge
It was the GM-powered Carnegie Mellon team that took first prize at the DARPA Urban Grand Challenge last year. Now the team will be sending its entrant, nicknamed "Boss," to the 2008 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach on the weekend of April 19 - 20. There, in front of cheering race fans, the autonomous vehicle will strut its stuff on the track and at speed against competitors "Junior" from Stanford, and "Ben" from the University of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University.
It's a demonstration, not a race, so don't expect these vehicles to put up a fight against the ultra-fast Champ Cars (no worries - they won't be sharing the track at the same time). In all honesty, with running speeds estimated at about 15 mph, these four-wheelers will err on the slow side of caution if given the chance. Nobody can predict, however, how well the driverless vehicles will complete the 1.97-mile Grand Prix course, but we're willing to bet that the DARPA entrants hit fewer walls than the "stars" participating in Saturday's Celebrity Race.
Gallery: 2007 DARPA Urban Grand Challenge
[Source: engadget]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
tankd0g 12:04PM (4/02/2008)
It should be out there during the celebraty race, it can't do any more damage to the other car than the celebs do.
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LoneWolf 12:36PM (4/02/2008)
The most interesting "race series" on the world, imho. There's nothing better than a few robots competing each other.
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Chris 12:50PM (4/02/2008)
kind of reminds me of election year politics
Kevin 1:09PM (4/02/2008)
Cars were meant to be DRIVEN. A driverless car using GPS that might not be up to date, is just a recipe for disaster.
If people using the GPS system were willing to surrender their own judgement to drive their vehicles into areas that were not driveable, what change do these driverless vehicles have?
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Doug 1:52PM (4/02/2008)
These vehicles are a development project for the military (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to get soldiers out of harms way in the battlefield. Your statement is irrelevant.
Kevin 2:09AM (4/03/2008)
Nope. It's on par on the subject of DRIVERLESS VEHICLES.
There is an extraordinary pathetic fallacy in your response attempting to explain something by giving an explanation (which is fine) and then attacking the original post by saying it was irrelevant (which is not fine).
If it was irrelevant as you boldly claim, you wouldn't and shouldn't have bothered to respond. But since you responded, your post is just as irrelevant.
I still think driverless vehicles, wherever they are and whoever they are developed for, are a waste of resources. It's my opinion and dammit I'm entitled to it!
If it'll change, it'll only be because I want it to change. Because it's all about ME, not YOU.
With that said, I'm looking forward to the race. It'll be fun to see the outcome. Have nice day cheetoh-peetoh. Betcha didn't see THAT one coming 'eh? Heh heh heh.
Victor 1:49PM (4/02/2008)
Standford? You mean Stanford
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Doug 1:52PM (4/02/2008)
"don't expect these vehicles to put up a fight against the ultra-fast Champ Cars"
Champ Car is dead. These will be IRL cars. :'-(
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Iridium 3:21PM (4/02/2008)
I hope they let Boss run as fast as it can go. Carnegie has had driverless cars that can dive with traffic for years. 15mph is nothing, imagine a Humvee trying to get soldiers out of harms way at 15mph.
The developers at Carnegie say that Boss is fully capable of running at 50mph, that is what I want to see.
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