Driverless Vehicles Grand Challenge Competition

Imagine a drive where you kick back, close your eyes, and in general relax as life passes by your window. Sounds like an everyday occurrence for many of us, right? But imagine you’re the driver.

This isn’t as crazy as it sounds. If this seems implausible, then you haven’t been paying attention to the activities at DARPA – the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the Department of Defense – which has sponsored two Grand Challenge competitions since 2004. The goal: to prove that driverless vehicles can negotiate terrain and obstacles without any human direction whatsoever.

Far from a whimsical exercise, developing so-called autonomous vehicle technologies could well lead to the Jetsons-style intelligent vehicles and highways envisioned by many futurists, scientists, regulators, and really anyone who would like to see the stresses of negotiating traffic a thing of the past. But why would competitions to enhance driving be funded by the Department of Defense? Ah, the light bulbs go off. Technologies that allow negotiating traffic without requiring a driver could just as easily be applied to moving supplies and military hardware through dangerous territory like the roads of Iraq, or wherever our military is tasked to do its job. Considering the substantial challenges and human toll being paid for this very mission today, this is a worthy goal.

This dual-use technology is an ideal fit for DARPA’s mission. As the central research and development arm of the Department of Defense, the agency’s job is to explore and direct research projects and technologies that can provide dramatic benefits to military missions. Since competitions with large cash prizes historically motivate the best and brightest to bring unique solutions to the challenge at hand, DARPA has the approval of Congress to use this approach in recognizing achievement and bringing innovative solutions to its goals.

Since 2004, DARPA has sponsored two Grand Challenge competitions. The first underscored the enormous difficulty of this challenge. Of the 15 autonomous ground vehicles fielded by teams in an effort to autonomously negotiate a 142 mile desert course, none finished. This obstacle was spectacularly overcome in 2005 as four vehicles completed the challenge within the 10 hour limit. “Stanley,” an autonomous VW Touareg TDI entered by Stanford University, completed that year’s 132 mile desert course in just over six hours while running on biomass-derived SunFuel and walked – or rather drove – away with the competition’s $2 million prize. Stanley was sponsored by Volkswagen of America, Intel, MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Red Bull.

Stanford engineered its groundbreaking vehicle on a standard European Touareg R5. It operated autonomously through a drive-by-wire system using global positioning with the aid of inertial measurement and a radar system, wheel speed sensors, lasers, and a camera. Of course, this substantial application of artificial intelligence required massive computing power, which was supplied by half-a-dozen Pentium M computers.

This year’s entry from Stanford also fields a clean diesel VW model, but this time a turbo direct-injection Passat wagon. Called “Junior,” this smaller autonomous vehicle has again been modified by Volkswagen’s Electronics Research Lab in Palo Alto, California so its steering, throttle, and brakes are entirely computer controlled. The more challenging urban course requires an even more sophisticated approach, so engineers have integrated a spinning, 360-degree range-finding laser array, six video cameras, GPS, inertial navigation, and a bumper-mounted laser radar, among many other high-tech systems. Much greater computing power is also required and provided by Intel Core 2 Duo processors. The software that makes Junior autonomous is being developed by a dozen researchers, students, and faculty at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab. The Stanford team has the same sponsors as it did with Stanley with the addition of Applanix, Google, and NXP Semiconductors.

Like last time, the Grand Challenge will award the top three finishers sizeable cash prices of $2 million, $1 million, and $500,000, respectively. These winners will need to complete the 60 mile urban challenge within a six hour time frame, at a course that remains to be identified in the Western U.S.