heh. Mac minis, w/e! Grab what youcan and cobble together a robotic chaffeur ASAP tho!
The event was held yesterday, and the performance of this year's 'bots in
DARPA's Urban Challenge exceeded all expectations with six entrants successfully completing the Urban Challenge in it's first year!
This stuff is SCARY COOL!Here's a excerpt:
This year’s race offered three prizes of $2 million, $1 million and $500,000 for the vehicles that were best able to navigate a 60-mile course in a simulated city environment in under six hours.
During the last week, the field of 35 invited qualifying semifinalists from a field of 89 original entrants was narrowed to 11 finalists.
Vehicles that competed in the Urban Challenge were required to operate entirely autonomously, without human intervention, as they obeyed California traffic laws and performed maneuvers such as merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles and avoiding obstacles. The vehicles had to think like human drivers and continually make split-second decisions to avoid moving vehicles, merge into traffic and safely pass through intersections. Demonstrating safe operation in an urban situation was an effective and consolidated method of testing situations the vehicles might face even while conducting missions in less populated areas. (
This brochure about the event has a map of the "course" on the last page.)
UAVs are ONE THING, but driverless vehicles driving around on CITY STREETS?!?! (Now that I think of it... COOL! When the time comes that they won't allow me to drive any more I'll just get a JeevesMobile 2012!)
