OCTOBER 14--Five autonomous ground vehicles successfully completed the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge (www.grandchallenge.org), a tough, 131.6-mile course in the Mojave Desert near Primm, NV. The results proved that autonomous vehicles can travel long distances over difficult terrain at speeds required by the military.
The shortest time was recorded by "Stanley", a 2004 diesel-powered Volkswagen Touareg R5, modified by the Stanford University Racing Team (Palo Alto, CA;www.standfordracing.org). By completing the course in an elapsed time of 6 hours, 53 minutes, 58 seconds (11 minutes, 42 seconds faster than the nearest challenger), the team won the $2 million prize with an average speed of 19.1 mph.
Stanley is actuated by a drive-by-wire system developed by Volkswagen of America's Electronic Research Lab (Palo Alto, CA;www.vw.com). All processing is performed by seven on-board Pentium M computers, and the vehicle incorporates measurements from GPS, a 6DOF inertial measurement unit, and wheel speed for pose estimation. The environment is perceived through five laser rangefinders, a radar system, a stereo camera pair, and a monocular vision system. All sensors acquire environmental data at rates between 10 and 100 Hz. Map and pose information are incorporated at 10 Hz, enabling the vehicle to avoid collisions with obstacles in real time.