Best of What's New 2008

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Tartan Racing Boss

The robot car arrives
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“Boss,” the brainchild of Tartan Racing (a collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University and General Motors), was the winner of the 2007 Darpa Urban Challenge, a competition of autonomous vehicles. The mission: execute tricky merging, passing and parking maneuvers as quickly as possible, while obeying California-state traffic laws. More than a dozen lasers, cameras and radars feed information about Boss’s surroundings into its “brain,” a computer that uses 500,000 lines of code to make decisions about the best way to reach its destination. Boss drove the course at up to 30 mph and took corners hard, finishing almost 20 minutes faster than its closest competitor. Its performance suggests that self-driving cars might not be so far off after all. tartanracing.org

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Jetman-E
11/30/08 at 11:23 am

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

-The Who , Wont Get Fooled Again.

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rsunsets
12/01/08 at 10:41 am

The cops will hate this thing,who do they give the ticket to?

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supergrover
12/02/08 at 1:57 pm

well, since darpa (a U.S. agency) is hosting the challedge, i'm assuming uncle sam wants the robocar for high risk situations; but not for low risk, where human drivers would be far cheaper. this make sense in off road or near off road situations, such as delivering suplies from a fort to a outpost in a hostile enviroment. it makes less sence in an urban enviroment.

therefore, i think darpa should invest more in off-road robocar prizes

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sakalava47
12/06/08 at 7:13 pm

actually supergrover (love the name btw) there are tons of imortant urban applications. Did you know that a leading cause of death in america are car accidents? A lot of those are due to tired or drunk drivers. Robotic cars, could conceivably drastically reduce this problem making the cost worth it.

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extremechiton
12/16/08 at 11:54 pm

the who is an awsome band!

ive always dreamed of owning a car with autopilot.

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T-buzz
12/17/08 at 9:13 am

this will help with the bad drivers out there
naming no names.

thebuzznew.com

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