Autoblog

If you're really looking forward to the day when your car says, "You just relax, Dave, and let me do the driving," it just got a little bit closer. GM and Carnegie Mellon University have announced a 5-year, $5 million Collaborative Research Laboratory (CRL) to do work on autonomous vehicles.

Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing entrant in last year's DARPA Urban Challenge, Boss (pictured), was the first across the line. The winning partnership and the $2 million winners check made it a natural fit for the two to combine on further research now that the major technical issues have been mostly addressed. The two parties also have another CRL, separate from the autonomous research, that has been going on for eight years.

The autonomous research will be focused on developing the underlying technologies for autonomous vehicles. According to Professor Rajkumar, "Autonomous vehicles will change the face of transportation by reducing deaths and injuries from automobile accidents and increasing the convenience and comfort of vehicles." Until they become self aware and decide to take over the Skynet system, at least...

[Source: GM]

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.

[Source: engadget]

The taxi business is quickly changing, with the Ford Crown Victoria set to take a permanent buyout, hybrids ready to invade Manhattan by 2012, and now robuCab. The driver-free robuCab was developed in France by Robosoft, and the technology is limited for now. It's a 4WD electric vehicle relying on a camera that reads a nearby curb and sensors reading both the curb angle and devices planted in the ground.

The slow-moving robuCab prototypes can carry four passengers, but we're not seeing a lot of luggage space in the pictures above. We also don't see robuCab taking jobs from New York's finest any time soon, as the technology still isn't close to being ready for prime time. Then again, we've already seen enough success with recent driverless car challenges to know anything is possible.

[Source: Engadget]

Stanford won the first ever DARPA Challenge -- a test of skill and endurance for autonomous vehicles -- in 2005 with a VW Passat wagon called Stanley. This year it came in second with a VW Passat Wagon called Stanley, Jr. Though the university didn't win the Challenge this year, it did win with VW, which has pledged $5.75 million over five years to fund VAIL: the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory at Stanford.

VAIL will house Stanford's CarLab, a research and teaching program that aims to "radically rethink the automobile in order to deliver unprecedented levels of safety and driver and passenger enjoyment." VW's own engineers will work with CarLab, as well as other academic groups housed at VAIL that explore computer science and electrical engineering, a mechanical engineering group working on cleaner engines and advanced dynamic control, and a communications group that is studying the "psychology of making cars safer and more enjoyable."

[Source: VW]

John McElroy is host of the TV program "Autoline Detroit". Every week he'll bring his unique insights as an auto industry insider to Autoblog readers.


click above image for more live shots from DARPA by John McElroy

DARPA DEBRIEF
By John McElroy

The DARPA Urban Challenge wrapped up this past weekend and it has to be one of the most exciting automotive events I've ever attended. There was an electricity in the air. You could feel the energy. It was almost like being at a Formula One race, but with an aura of real importance to it.

I think everyone there realized we were witnessing history in the making, like going to see one of the first flights of the Wright brothers. To me, this race proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that autonomous vehicles (driverless) will be a reality in about another decade.

There have been all kinds of media reports on how Carnegie-Mellon University won the race, followed by Stanford in second and Virginia Tech in third. So rather than re-report what you probably already know, here's some background of what it was like to be there.

Follow the jump for more from John McElroy, and check out his live pics from the DARPA Urban Challenge in the gallery below.


Live Photos Copyright ©2007 John McElroy / Weblogs, Inc.

After the DARPA dust settled, only 40 minutes separated the first, second and third place contenders for this year's $2 million bounty. The Carnegie Mellon team, behind the virtual wheel of a tech'd-out Tahoe dubbed the "Boss," won the DARPA Urban Challenge, the first event held in a mock city environment.

The Mellon crew beat out Stanford, Virginia Tech and MIT, and according to Wired's report, none of the top competitors were cited for traffic violations – something that most manned vehicles can't claim. Average speeds ranged from 13 to 14 mph over the course of the 55-mile trek. There was no mention of top speed and we're still uncertain about what specific obstacles were set out to befuddled the ghosts inside the machine.

There's no word yet on whether the DARPA event will continue, as many maintain that since the technical end of things have been sorted, it's time for private firms to take the lead. We'll have more on DARPA when Mr. McElroy reports on the event later in the week.

[Sources: GM (Press Release after the jump), Wired]

click above image for more pics from the 2007 DARPA Urban Grand Challenge

Route 66 passes right through Victorville, California, which is also home to the Route 66 Museum. Much breathless prose has been expended on the joys of piloting your buggy down the Great Diagonal Way. Antithetical to getting your kicks on Route 66 is the DARPA Urban Grand Challenge, hosted by Victorville. The contest, with a $2 million dollar, prize saw 11 teams send off driverless cars with a couple pats on the bumper and the admonishment to write home if they got work. Past DARPA Challenge winner Stanford got its car across the finish line first, with teams from Carnegie Mellon and Virginia Tech also managing to squeak across in the allotted six hours. Cornell and MIT-based teams were over the time limit, and a couple of teams had their vehicles lose their minds or crack into each other. In all, the contest was far more successful than the initial running in 2004, when nobody finished. The winner will be announced later today and be crowned based on speed as well as safety through the 60-mile course. Autoblog editor emeritus John McElroy was in attendance and will have his report for us on the DARPA Urban Grand Challenge later in the week.

[Source: Reuters, photos by STRINGER/Getty]

The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge is mere weeks away, and the top tier teams are readying to do battle on a yet-to-be-disclosed course in Victorville, CA. The event will take place November 3rd at the former George Air Force Base, and we'll have our own celebrity blogger, John McElroy, on hand to take pics and report back. Though many teams are entered, a select few from major universities are considered serious contenders for the $2 million grand prize. They include last year's winner Stanford who is entering a Volkswagen Passat Wagon named 'Junior', perennial runner-up powerhouse Carnegie Mellon featuring a driverless Chevy Tahoe, and the MIT team that's going upscale with an autonomous Land Rover LR3.

Land Rover decided to show off the entrant today releasing this pic of the vehicle in all its geeky glory. Though the DARPA Grand Challenge event is meant to showcase technologies that could ultimately lead to autonomous vehicles on public roads, one look at the number of sensors on the MIT entrant would likely make a Land Rover designer pass out and a potential customer run for the hills. Equipped with GPS, the MIT LR3 uses LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) range finders to whisker its way through uncharted environments. Until all this equipment can be scaled down for mass consumption, these vehicles will remain as merely impractical proof that safe and reliable autonomous driving is at least possible.
Before the event takes place two weekends from now, those teams that have made it this far will participate in a National Qualification Event this weekend to further weed out the autonomous wannabes from the legitimate contenders. We fully expect Standford's 'Junior', Carnegie Mellon's Tahoe and the MIT LR3 to make it through to the final event where Mr. McElroy will be ready cover the final outcome.

[Source: Land Rover]

Now this is what we call an upgrade: NC State University's Insight Racing team has scored a new set of wheels for the upcoming 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge. The team's Chevrolet Suburban, dubbed "Desert Rat" for the last DARPA challenge, which sent vehicles across the Mojave in the final event, will sit this one out. Instead, Insight will field "Lone Wolf," the new Lotus Elise which was presented to them by the automaker last week. In addition to the car, Insight will be receiving support from Lotus Engineering, who will help transform the sports car into the autonomous machine it needs to be to make it through the preliminary rounds and into the final Urban Challenge event. That task is made even more difficult when you consider that an Elise offers a fraction of the on-board space that was available in the Suburban. Expect to see plenty of innovation as they cram all the required technology into the Lotus' compact package.

The cruelest irony of all is that the Insight Racing team has to rig the Elise -- a driver's car if there ever was one -- to be completely driverless. We have a feeling that, given the chance, this is one instance where the engineering students would gladly forego the high-technology and get behind the wheel themselves. The 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge finale is scheduled for November 2007.

[Sources: NC State Technician Online & PhysOrg.com]

Every week, in garages around the world, amateur racers spend their hard-earned day-job dollars repairing and improving all sorts of racecars, with one goal in mind - winning a tacky plastic trophy on the weekend. Now the U.S. government has honored that hallowed tradition, announcing that the robot drivers in the upcoming 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge will forgo the $2 million cash prize previously promised to the winner, in exchange for - a trophy! (Probably a mil-spec trophy that they'll pay too much for, but still.)

Actually, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency isn't trying to save money (taxpayers should be so lucky). Congress recently changed the rules for the Department of Defense, and it no longer has the authority to award cash prizes.

Robot fans needn't be too concerned about a lack of entries for next year's event - the eleven "Track A" teams selected this month for the 2007 Urban Challenge will each receive from DARPA up to $1 million in technology development funding, in addition to the support of their corporate sponsors. The A-teams include last year's winner Stanford University and perennial contenders Carnegie-Mellon University, as well as big-time defense contractors Raytheon and Honeywell.

"Track B" teams, which receive no funding from DARPA, can still earn their way into the final competition for the DARPA mugs by successfully completing qualifying events. The Urban Challenge final event requires competitors to safely complete a 60-mile simulated urban area course (in traffic) in under six hours.

[via engadget]