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Robotic Audi To Brave Pikes Peak Without a Driver
Scifi83 writes "A team of researchers at the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS) has filled the trunk of an Audi TTS with computers and GPS receivers, transforming it into a vehicle that drives itself. The car will attempt Pikes Peak without a driver at race speeds, something that's never been done."
would like to welcome our robotic driver overlords.
alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls
The researchers have programmed Shelley to handle like a racecar by using a set of computer calculations called algorithms
Ha! So that's how they did it! Quite simple, really, once you know the trick.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Side effects are a bitch when you need to tell left from right.
Observe trials from uphill side of road.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
It may not be as tall as Pike's Peak, but it's a more challenging road, IMHO. http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/blogs/perrinpost/2007/08/this-car-climbe.html
Having raced up Pikes Peak myself, I think this is pretty impressive. The road surface varies from almost-pavement-quality treated packed dirt, to completely loose gravel on rut-filled rock, with (as I recall) an average 10% climb. It'd be a great test ground for offroad stuff at a slow speed with nobody else on the road, but doing it at full speed requires a *lot* more than just the ability to see where the roadway is: giving a robot the ability to keep a fast car from skidding/sliding on loose gravel on an off-camber turn appears to me to be a wholly different type of challenge than previous autonomous driving projects.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I already saw this on Speed Racer.
Spoiler Alert!
Speed wins the race anyway, and helps Inspector Detector catch the nefarious people behind the robot car
More music, fewer hits
I am not certain what will be more astonishing: watching this succeed or watching it fail.
Mount Evans Road would be more challenging...
The researchers have programmed Shelley to handle like a racecar by using a set of computer calculations called algorithms
See what happens when you let Liberal Arts majors playing journalist direct the public's understanding of technical things?
Soon: "John's car rolled out of his driveway all by itself and hit a fire hydrant, honey! He should sue General Motors for faulty algorithms!"
;)
Remember to maintain your supply of
...when the DOT discovers that Google Maps shows a bridge that isn't there. Yet.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I have an image in my mind of the Price is Right Cliffhangers game, where the guy goes right over the top when you lose. Oh, and the song is now firmly implanted in my brain for the rest of the day.
Except AUDI has been known as 'Accelerates Under Demonic Influence' for some time now.
It seems like it would be braver to have no driver but still have a passenger.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Shelley has reached speeds of 130 miles per hour without a driver on testing grounds at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
I could do much better with a brick.
If you were going to build a robot car, why not build it out of something you can get real cheap. Like, say, you know, your Grandma's Plymouth Aries K.
Ari Vatanen racing up pike's peak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKgeCQGu_ug
Are these the same guys that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge? There's a fascinating documentary on this, available on Netflix Streaming. "The Great Robot Race: Nova".
The good news about this is it can now drive only itself off a cliff when the gas pedal gets stuck.
One very important part of high speed time trials through rough turns is weight distribution between the front and rear axles. With all the computer equipment adding weight to the rear of the car and the lack of a driver in the front of the car, it will not handle as expected by the original engineers. This could cause massive oversteer. I hope they compensate for this shift in weight distribution.
When the car gets here, we, the inhabitants of Pike's peak, will welcome our new Audi-driving robotic overlords.
Not many humans can drive up the Pike's Peak at racing speed.
If they can create a robotic car to do this then one major criterion for a "human level" AI has been reached.
Rod Millen's time
The advantage that a driver has is the cognitive ability to observe the road in front of them and make adjustments in prediction of what the conditions will be.
If a computer is responding to programmed route and responding to sensed changes (reaction), it will be too late for the car to adjust. If their computers are looking ahead and making the same kind of informed estimates (road surface type, side-slope, etc...), then I'll be really impressed!!
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Although everyone knows all Audis are named Gretchen by default.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
It's going to be interesting to see how the car detects and handles the drainage culverts. The last few miles have corrugated metal drainage culverts crossing the road periodically to carry off the snowmelt. These often get overloaded and instead you have a big mud puddle with a hard metal culvert under the mud. Humans can use a little intelligence and slow down for these. It will be interesting to see how the automated Audi handles these and other unexpected situations!
My understanding is that this is generally solved but doesn't really lead to anything interesting unless you know the right formulas for the for the domain. Any news on whether they got passed formula 1?
I want to program it to drive past a cop in the carpool lane with a mannequin in the passenger seat wearing hat and sunglasses on a cloudy day.
That's because of the evil spirit that possesses drivers once they sit behind the wheel of a 'S' series Audi -- I know! :)
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
You are my new best friend.
If it wasn't for KITT I wouldn't know how to perform a flawless in lane J-Turn!
P.S. it's not as easy as it looks in the movies!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
They've built one excessive printer.
Something I find extremely frustrating when I read articles like this is why the delay in bringing products like this to market? If this car makes it up the peek and it is reproducible with a better chance of success than a human driver, and the same can be shown for regular driving conditions, then why isn't it being sold to people? Many older individuals who can no longer drive, or those with severe disabilities would benefit TREMENDOUSLY from this technology. Not to mention people like me who just want to reduce the probability of accidents on the road. I trust a highly optimized computer to be much more accurate at doing repetitive tasks like driving than I would a human in the same way that I trust the average computer to crunch numbers more than the average human.
Many control features already exist on the stock Audi. For example, the computers in Shelley's trunk will plug into the car's existing electric steering system. The car moves into action with stock automatic gear shifting and brakes with an active vacuum booster, a feature that normal cars use for emergency braking.
Huh? Does this mean Audis are "Steer by Wire"?
"There are some sheer drops at Pikes Peak in which any sort of self-preservation kicks in and you slow down a bit."
As for successful rally drivers to which I've been acquainted, once they get behind the wheel, they no longer have anything resembling self-preservation.
Would be interesting to see if, during this adventure, they have someone in the car as they usually do during other tests. The other tests being on the salt flats doesn't really bring much danger into the mix that can't be avoided as opposed to long drops off cliffs. I hope they record a video of the interior while it goes up, that would be a neat one to see.
... if they will sell the pieces of flaming wreckage on eBay as one item or several. My money's on several.
But can it parallel park?