Arduous hours of testing and driving out at Robot City paid off this week when CMU’s Tartan Racing Team’s self-propelled vehicle made history by finishing first in the DARPA Urban Challenge in California, a boon for robotics development in the region..
And it wasn’t even close.
The robotized 2007 Chevy Tahoe, named “Boss,” navigated the course equally as well as the 11 other competitors in terms of safety and stability. That meant the race was won by speed. “Boss” averaged about 14 miles per hour over 55 miles, deftly finishing the course 20 minutes ahead of the second-place finisher, Stanford’s “Junior.”
The $2M prize will be used to further robotics research in the region.
“Robots sometimes stun the world, inspire a lot of people and change the belief of what is possible,” said William “Red” Whittaker, a CMU robotics professor and team leader of Tartan Racing. “We’ve seen that here and once the perception of what’s possible changes it never goes back. This is a phenomenal thing for robotics.”
The race, sponsored by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), proved to the world that autonomous driving technologies will someday save lives on the battlefield.
Tartan Racing includes CMU faculty, staff and students from the School of Computer Science’s Robotics Institute, as well as CMU’s College of Engineering. It received major support from General Motors, Caterpillar and Continental AG.
For more on the race, click here.
Writer:
Deb SmitSource: William "Red" Whittaker, CMU
Image courtesy of DARPA/CMU