Meet Stanley
Dec. 31st, 2005 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneThe Defense Department Advanced Projects group has held a car race for two years in the badlands of Nevada. The difference between this and other races, aside from the sweetened $2,000,000 pot, is that the vehicles must be completely autonomous.
Last year, the first time the race was held, was a miserable failure. No entrant completed the course. This year was a different story. The winner, Stanley, was a Volkeswagon Toureg. The technology that it used really wasn't that sophisticated when compared to some of the other entrants, but they totally redid their software and it changed everything. DARPA set a course speedlimit of 5-25 MPH, Stanley routinely wanted to exceed that because of its capabilities.
Interesting stuff, and it shows that an autonomous vehicle is much closer than we think. In fact, there are several autonomous features currently in cars that you may not know about.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/stanley.html
Last year, the first time the race was held, was a miserable failure. No entrant completed the course. This year was a different story. The winner, Stanley, was a Volkeswagon Toureg. The technology that it used really wasn't that sophisticated when compared to some of the other entrants, but they totally redid their software and it changed everything. DARPA set a course speedlimit of 5-25 MPH, Stanley routinely wanted to exceed that because of its capabilities.
Interesting stuff, and it shows that an autonomous vehicle is much closer than we think. In fact, there are several autonomous features currently in cars that you may not know about.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/stanley.html
