Are robotic cars around the corner?

Posted on Thu, Dec. 01, 2005
AUTOMOBILE TECHNOLOGY

A number of challenges remain, but a competition in October proved cars that drive themselves are not as far-fetched as once believed.


BY RALPH VARTABEDIAN
Los Angeles Times


The predictions of futurists have often fizzled on the subject of robots, which today can vacuum floors and play chess but not drive a car.
But an exciting demonstration in the Nevada desert suggests that technologists are getting closer than anybody realized to a robotic car.

Within about two years, the first car able to drive autonomously on freeways will be a reality, predicts Sebastian Thrun, Stanford University's guru of robotic cars and the winner of the Pentagon's Grand Challenge race in October.

The Grand Challenge, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, pitted teams that had built cars able to autonomously navigate and drive an off-road course in the Nevada desert.

The Stanford team won a $2 million prize for completing the course in the shortest time among a field of 23 finalists, five of which were able to cross the finish line. In a similar contest last year, not a single entry finished.

Thrun admits he is not much of an expert on cars, although he is director of one of a handful of artificial-intelligence labs nationwide that are directing serious attention to developing cars that can drive themselves.

''I am a big fan of putting the intelligence in the cars,'' Thrun says.
That statement marks a shift in thinking, coming after decades and billions of dollars in government spending on intelligent highways. The Bush administration has sharply increased such federal outlays, which have reached hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
The Grand Challenge results this year were a real breakthrough, demonstrating that individual cars could successfully use satellite guidance, artificial vision and complex software to navigate around obstacles, away from ruts and through tunnels.

Stanford spent about $500,000.

The car, named Stanley, was equipped with a global positioning system, a series of laser range finders and a video camera, all connected to a computer that made decisions about how to navigate the course.

No doubt a human driver could have beaten the car's time, because people can still handle a steering wheel more adeptly than a computer can. But perhaps not for much longer. For decades, the best chess players could beat computers, but no more.
Thrun is unrestrained in his enthusiasm for the technology, saying the challenge of navigating the off-road course -- with vegetation, ruts and rocks -- was greater than keeping a car on a paved highway.

Nonetheless, Thrun hopes that within two years his team will be able to build a car capable of autonomously navigating a moderately crowded freeway.
Stability control systems and adaptive cruise control systems already show that car computers can make critical decisions. But complex tasks such as merging onto a freeway or making left turns in traffic are significant challenges, Thrun admits.

If they ever do get on the road, such cars could transform society. Imagine a commute where you were free to work, read or perform other useful activities as your car drove you to work.
No longer would parking lots have to be next to offices or schools, because cars could be programmed to park themselves elsewhere after dropping off their occupants.
Such effects could transform urban real estate, insurance and the auto industry.