The robocar news continues to increase in pace.

Robot racing

On Tuesday I stopped by the Atlantic's Big Science day where Chris Gerdes of Stanford's CARS centre announced results of their race between a robocar and humans on a racetrack. The winner -- the humans, but only by a small margin. The CARS team actually studied human driver actions to program their car, but found the human drivers have gotten very good at squeezing most of the available performance out of the vehicles, leaving little room for the robot to improve.

Another result reaffirmed studies of passenger reactions. People taken through the first lap were quite scared, but by the next lap they relaxed and gained confidence in the system. This result shows up time and time again, and has convinced me that while many people tell me they think robocars will not become popular because people will be too scared to ride them, those people are wrong, even about their own behaviour. Most of them, at least.

Cars Legal

Also on the Stanford front, Bryant Walker Smith, who has decided to make robocar law a specialty, has released an analysis of the legality of robocars in the USA. The conclusion -- robocars which have a human occupant who can take the wheel in the event of a problem are probably legal in almost all states, not just the states that have explicitly made them legal.

DARPA humanoid robot contest includes driving

DARPA ran the 3 grand challenges for robocars but stopped in 2007 after the urban challenge. Their latest challege contest involves making humanoid robots, but the DARPA Robotics Challenge includes a phase where your robot should be able to do a variety of tasks on rough terrain, including getting into a car and driving it. There are 4 tracks to the challenge. 3 are in the physical world, with either provided robots or team-built robots. The 4th is in the virtual world which will allow smaller teams to compete without the cost of working with a physical robot. I have written before about the opportunities of a robocar simulator for testing and contests, and so I am eager to see how this simulator develops.

China

Research in China has advanced. The National Natural Science Foundation has announced the goal of diong a short drive near Beijing and finally a long trip all the way to Shenzhen, 2400km away. This project primarily uses vision and radar, so it will be interesting to see if they can do this reliably without lasers.