Carnegie Mellon University and its robotics guru, Red Whittaker, have been vindicated.
On Sunday, CMU's Tartan Racing took home $2 million for first place in DARPA's Urban Challenge--a test of driverless cars on urban streets here at the former George Air Force Base in Southern California's Mojave Desert. By doing so, the team regained its pride after two stinging defeats in 2004 and 2005. And it stole some glory back from 2005's winner, Stanford University, in tackling what was effectively a harder challenge this year. (Stanford claimed the second prize of $1 million this year.)
Apart from a little competitive drama and at least one robot wreck, the DARPA Urban Challenge produced a more important win for robotics this year, one that everyone from Whittaker to Stanford's team leader, Sebastian Thrun, pointed out at the race Saturday. That was simply that the competition seeded the idea in people's minds that self-driving cars are possible. Moreover, proponents say the underlying technology will pave the way for a new generation of cars that will help save lives, either through assisted-driving applications for civilian cars or fully autonomous vehicles for the military. |