Robot Car to Tackle City Streets
From: Stanford Daily - 10/11/2006
By: Rahul Kanakia

The Stanford Racing Team plans to develop a car that is able to navigate a
simulated urban environment for 60 miles in under six hours, with no human
guidance. The robot car must be able to operate just as an experienced human
driver would: recognizing and avoiding pedestrians, bicycles, curbs, and
holes, all while obeying traffic signals and laws. The team is involved in
this technology for the "humanitarian aspect," says David Stevens, a fifth
year PhD candidate in computer science. With 43,000 deaths occurring on the
road every day, automatic cars that would be far less prone to mistakes could
save many lives. A robot car would save time and money in countless ways,
specifically, the ability to "drop you off and go park itself some distance
away," or allow several people to share a ride to work, because the car could
take itself between the different locations, or allow people to get work done
on their long drive home, rather than having their attention devoted to the
road, says Stevens. Michael Montemerlo, senior researcher for Stanford's AI
Labs and software leader for the Racing Team, notes that traffic and other
problems could also be improved. "With communication between vehicles, you
could increase [traffic flow] substantially so you actually get places faster
on the highway. And you can imagine people driving who can't drive today,
such as elderly people who can't see very well. Or even kids. Their parents
could put them in the car and send them where they need to go," says
Montemerlo. Despite the advancements in robot cars, Montemerlo does not think
that the full scope of the technology will be realized in the immediate
future, but he says incremental advances such as anti-lock brakes will
ultimately lead to the point that "one day you'll wake up, and you'll have a
car that's able to drive itself."  

Read the entire article at:
http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2006/10/11/robotCarToTackleCityStreets

Links:
Stanford Racing Team
http://www.stanfordracing.org/
http://cs.stanford.edu/group/roadrunner/team.html

Michael Montemerlo (CMU)
http://www.ri.cmu.edu/people/montemerlo_michael.html
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/magic/
http://cs.stanford.edu/group/roadrunner/team.html#Montemerlo