Ordinary Gweilo

It’s always interesting when ‘science fiction’ turns into reality (‘Aggressive but safe’ SUV wins robotic street race):

A sports utility vehicle with a mind of its own was declared the winner of DARPA’s urban robot car race on Sunday. It travelled autonomously through traffic for six hours and 60 miles (100 kilometres) around a ghost town in California, US, to scoop the prize.

Nicknamed Boss, the vehicle developed at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, won a $2 million prize in the third such race sponsored by the US Department of Defense, which wants military supply vehicles to one day drive themselves.

The entrants included several station wagons and a huge green military truck decked out with flashing lights, warning sirens, spinning laser range finders and cameras. Only six of 11 finalists finished the course, at an abandoned military base, on Saturday.

The winners of the DARPA Urban Challenge were decided overnight, based on their ability to steer safely around the course, as well as their speed. Stanford University, which won a 2005 race, came in second and Virginia Tech finished third.

The New Scientist followed up with another story (but this one’s behind a pay-wall)

It’s a gruelling race through unpredictable moving traffic, parking lots, construction sites and even an excursion down a dirt road into southern California’s high desert. Despite a couple of fender benders, the results are encouraging. Driverless cars on our highways might be closer than you think.

The UC isn’t the Pentagon’s first foray into robot racing. In the Grand Challenge (GC) of 2004 and 2005, robot cars had to navigate a dirt course across the Mojave desert (New Scientist, 19 November 2005, p 48). That race, in which robots had to avoid stationary obstacles and follow a list of GPS coordinates known as waypoints, was simple by comparison, though. According to veteran robot racer William Whittaker, whose Carnegie Mellon University team built the UC’s winning car, Boss, it consisted of nothing more than “barbaric, flat-out charges with big rooster tails of dust”. The UC, on the other hand, introduces much more sophisticated challenges.

As the vehicles race together around the track, they must detect and avoid moving objects. If another vehicle stops, the robot cars must work out why and then decide whether to change route, drive around it or simply wait for it to move again. They must also obey the rules of the road, such as who has right of way at a four-way stop sign, and demonstrate skills such as parallel parking.

There’s also this warning:

Driverless cars won’t be reaching our streets any time soon, however. One of the main reasons is that people might find accidents caused by driverless vehicles particularly unacceptable. That means robotic navigation skills and obstacle avoidance will have to be as near to perfect as possible before we see any driving around. “The first person that gets killed by an autonomous vehicle is going to set the field back 18 months,” says William Kehaly, team leader of Axion Racing. Apart from anything else, who would be liable in such an accident?

18 months?  I think it might set it back rather longer than that!  Driverless cars will need to be extremely safe before they are allowed on public roads.

Also, the Hong Kong version will need a robotic arm to wave in a cheery way after cutting you up…