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Autonomous Race Cars

Posted by timothy on from the eyescan-ignition-coming-soon dept.

Octothorp writes: "Though not as complicated as the underwater vehicles. There is an annual competition sponsored by National Semiconductors to build an autonomous race car. They move along pretty well too, at almost 9 ft/s. More technical information on how they are built is available on a Berkeley page, and there's a video of the winning run for 2002."

5 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Real-life application? by salimma · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I recall an experiment done in California a few months back whereby cars automatically drive themselves on a stretch of a highway equipped with magnetic strips down the centre of the lane.

    Since public transport seems to be out of the question for medium-distance transportation in the States (witness Amtrak's plight - and CoachUSA's financial gymnastics of late) automated private transport might fill the gap - provided price can be brought down.

    It is really interesting to see what comes out of this. Certainly more applicable in the near future than football-playing robots - or this terrible series in the UK with robots battling each other, armed with saws, hammers and whatnot contraptions..

    Curious,

    --
    Michel
    Fedora Project Contribut
    1. Re:Real-life application? by martyn+s · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's not really necessarily true that it will contribute to congestion. Going slow doesn't necessarily lead to congestion. Traffic is a complicated subject, but if the computers had certain rules defined, depending on how the rules were formed, less congestion might result, but it depends on the rules. For example, if the rule is "immediately go try to slip into any gap or opening," which is the rule that most people use, then congestion will result. But if proper rules are formed, it could lead to much less congestion, regardless of speed. I'd imagine if there was some sort of radio communication between the cars, or even a centralized computer traffic controller, then we might have a highly efficient and congestion free roadway system. Lower speed doesn't really mean higher congestion.

  2. Nice, but what about the Army's ALV project? by AsOldAsFortran · · Score: 3, Interesting
    In the 1980's President Reagan had the Star Wars project, which everyone has heard about, but there was also $600M in funding for other projects including the autonomous land vehicle (ALV). A number of schools worked on this, but the most successful was CMU with a number of robot vehicles that could go up to 60 mph and drive on uncontrolled roads - one drove cross country in a demo. ALVINN was one name used for this system. As a result of Sept. 11th there is renewed US research funding for this area. Autonomous flying vehicles, like the Predator in Afganistan, also came in part out of the 1980s funding from DARPA - we just haven't seen the similar successful application of the land version.

    The key to this particular competition seems to be the size and weight limits on the cars. This is a contest for little RC-style cars. The technology exists to go much faster, but not in this form factor.

  3. Auto Autopilots inevitable by BeBoxer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's my opinion that autopilot for your car is an inevitable development. It will become the only way to keep highways scaling. Adding more lanes to add capacity works to a point, but doesn't work forever. I don't think it's feasable to expect a human to navigate a twenty or thirty lane highway. And the density of traffic which an existing highway can carry is limited by the poor driving ability of humans.

    I think eventually high-capacity highways will require the use of an autopilot. Doing so would allow the cars to be run with inter-car gaps which would be suicidal with a human behind the wheel. Most stop-n-go situations are due to bad planning on the part of drivers. They speed up too much when traffic clears ahead, zoom up on the cars in front, and then have to slow down to avoid an accident. This type of driving creates waves of congestion which travel backwards down the highway, and is due entirely to poor coordination among drivers. But there is no reason that under computer control rush hour can't cruise along at 60 miles an hour with a car length or less between cars. I bet you could easily triple the maximum capacity of a highway, not to mention getting everybody to their destination faster and with better fuel economy to boot. The R&D will be expensive, but like any electrics the hardware will be practically free once developed. Compared to the cost of expanding existing freeway's, it will make sense finacially too. I figure it's maybe 10 years out.

    American's are not likely to give up their cars for any sort of public transportation, no matter how impractical cars become with rising fuel costs, increasing travel times due to congestion, increasing insurance rates, etc. Most Americans have convinced themselves that they enjoy sitting in stop and go traffic, as long as it's in a car and not a bus. But if we could figure out a way to let them keep their cars, reduce pollution, reduce accidents, let them safely talk on their cell phones, and not have to build mile-wide highways I suspect a lot of us might go for it.

  4. You can play at home by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    CogniToy has a game that simulates the programming of these robots. They have a small web based demo Here If you go to their main page you can get more details on the full game