A modified Chevy Tahoe sports utility vehicle was declared the winner of a robot car race on Sunday after it travelled without help from humans for six hours and 60 miles (100km) around a California ghost town.
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Nicknamed Boss, the vehicle from Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh won a $US2m prize in the third such race sponsored by the US Department of Defence, which wants robots eventually to drive military supply vehicles, Reuters reported.
Reuters said the entrants – including station wagons and a huge green military truck all decked out with flashing lights, warning sirens, spinning laser range finders and cameras – looked like mini-versions of the ‘monster’ trucks that duel at arenas around the United States and only six vehicles out of 11 finalists finished the course.
It was on an urban military training facility located on the former George Air Force Base. The course was selected because its network of urban roads – formerly home to base personnel – best simulate the type of terrain American forces operate in when deployed overseas.
Reuters said the winners were determined on safety as well as speed. Stanford University, which won a 2005 race, came in second and Virginia Tech finished third.
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By GlobalDataThe news agency said the effort brought together some of the top talents at US universities and corporations to work on a big technology challenge. Science fans have followed the robots’ progress avidly, but the biggest benefits are in the future.
The US military aims to put robots behind the wheel of supply vehicles – with a goal of making a third of its supply fleet robotic by 2015 – to keep soldiers out of danger while automakers see intelligent cars helping people drive and eventually taking over the task altogether for better safety and comfort.
Reuters said the race’s objective – for the vehicles to finish without a dent, following California traffic rules precisely, within six hours – was daunting. A minor bump, the worst accident on Saturday, drew a collective gasp from hundreds of fans drawn to the abandoned base about 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
Vehicles with hundreds of thousands of lines of computer code for brains appeared to have their own personalities, Reuters said. The vehicles hit top speeds of about 30 mph (48 km/h).
Using a combination of satellite navigation, cameras, radar and lasers, computer-based artificial intelligence systems determine where the car is and where to go, then deliver directions to a system which drives the car, from steering to acceleration, the report added.
Reuters noted that the Defence Department’s research arm, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, sponsored dirt-road robot races in 2004 and 2005 but the 2007 Urban Challenge was much harder, requiring complicated decisions from robots that in previous years simply had to find a course and stay on it.
Reuters added that the department gave a little help when needed to robots racing on Saturday. It regularly used remote pause systems to halt vehicles, avoiding traffic jams that could have damaged or confused the cars.
One team was allowed to dig its car out when it took an unanticipated left turn off a dirt road and got stuck, and at least one computer system was restarted during the race, the news agency said.
The former airbase in Victorville is now a logistics airport providing freight handling for west coast customers and is also used for long-term aircraft storage in the dry desert heat, as well as army training.
