Are Robotic Cars a reallity? Well over the past 10 years companies have been developing Cars to enter the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) challenge and have made significant progress.
The DARPA Urban Challenge is a vehicle research and development program with the goal of developing technology that will keep war fighters off the battlefield and out of harm’s way.
The Urban Challenge features cars maneuvering in a mock city environment, executing simulated military supply missions while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles.
The program is conducted as a series of qualification steps leading to a competitive final event, scheduled to take place on November 3, 2007. The exact location will be announced before the National Qualification Event scheduled for October 2007. DARPA is offering $2M for the fastest qualifying vehicle, and $1M and $500,000 for second and third place.This program is an outgrowth of two previous DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous vehicle competitions.
We are starting to see some of this technology transfer into everyday cars, for example the Mercedes C Class with the new Pre-safe system and the selective dampening systems.
DARPA Challege websiteMercedese C Class official site
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