DARPA Urban Challenge

Today as I write this, the "Urban Challenge" to drive autonomous vehicles is unfolding. I'm watching the live video feed and these cars are amazing. These things can stop at stop signs, wait for human driven cars before continuing, stay in their lanes, drive without lane markers and a number of other things. These difficulties are at least ten times harder than the 2005 Grand Challenge of desert driving. I am blow away that the technology could progress this far in two years.

Four of the 11 cars are out at this point. Junior the Stanford Racing Team entry is still going strong.

Sebastian Thrun, the leader of the Stanford Racing Team, is one of my heroes in life. He is both a terrific scientist and a terrific motivator and project manager. His stated goals (to me after the last DGC) and to the media are nothing short of revolutionizing the way we drive and live through robotics. From the video, I am tremendously impressed with their simple and elegant design that does not rely on brute force and massive computing power, but sophisticated algorithms and minimal hardware and human preparation.

The one thing I'm disappointed about is the Stanford Racing Team is their new website. Things were much better in 2005 :).