Posted on 11/16/2006 8:20:26 PM PST by annie laurie
A car that can drive itself is the fantasy of any designated driver, but the dream of owning a vehicle that does all the driving while you sit back and relax is one step closer to reality, as in-car artificial intelligence being developed by a team at Stanford University is ready to be used on city streets in the ultimate test of robot cars.
Winning the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge last year with a car called Stanley, Sebastian Thrun and his team at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory developed a form of robotics that went beyond being purely reactive.
Rather than simply processing data and reacting accordingly, the in-car A.I. could evaluate data in milliseconds and decide whether it was correct or not. Many of the early prototypes of robot-controlled cars were literally stopped in their tracks because of faulty information - mistaking tumbleweed for a rock for example.
"What we have in Stanley is a revolution in the field of artificial intelligence. We now have ways to make robots understand the environment and make decisions about it, even if that environment is really complex," ...
Thrun and his team mounted a series of sensors on the roof of their Volkswagen Touareg that included a radar, laser range-finders, stereo cameras and GPS receivers. Crucially it was also equipped with a machine that learnt algorithms to mimic the behavior of a human driver.
Sending data to the bank of computers housed in the trunk of the car ten times every second, information was processed and sent to the brake, throttle and steering wheel controlled by tiny motors.
Thrun's car completed the 132-mile desert course in just less than seven hours. Only four other cars out of the 23 that were competing for the prize finished the course...
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Ping
Someone tell that cop to join the club:
http://www.beattheheatinc.org/cops.html
Bah wrong thread L) Tired
"Only four other cars out of the 23 that were competing for the prize finished the course..."
Yeah, the winner ran the rest off the road....
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At least they didn't call it HAL. "I'm sorry Dave, I can't allow you to merge here."
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