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Stanford’s Robot Car Tries for Peak Performance

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by Steven Wasick on January 20th, 2010

Sometime this year, Stanford plans on taking their driverless Audi TTS and using it to climb the 12.4 miles up Pike’s Peak. Now, if you’ve been following recent advances in robot driving you might not be too impressed. After all, a full five years ago Stanford successfully used a VW Touareg named Stanley to compete against dozens of cars through 132 miles of desert. Two years later, it came in 2nd place during the DARPA Urban challenge, where their car (nicknamed Junior) had to navigate a mock cityscape involving other cars and traffic signals. Comparatively, running solo, even through the 156 turns of the Pike’s Peak racecourse, seems to be a step back. But in this case, it’s not what Stanford is doing, but how they plan on doing it that’s impressive. According to the Volkswagen Automotive Innovations Lab (VAIL), the plan is to put the petal to the metal, drift through the turns, and race their way to the top.

stanford audi pikes peak

Stanford's driverless Audi TTS will race up Pike's Peak this year.

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Self-Parking Car from Stanford and Volkswagen

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by Aaron Saenz on October 28th, 2009
No humans here. This Passat is parking itself.

No humans here. This Passat is parking itself.

Sure you could drive your own car and park it yourself, but why go to all that trouble when computer and robots can do it for you? The Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory (VAIL) and Stanford’s robotic car team recently debuted a Passat that can park itself. The autonomous valet parking project used only moderate modifications to allow the VW sedan to find the first available space in a lot and park itself without any human guidance. Check out the video of the October 24th demonstration from BotJunkie after the break.

Stanford’s no newcomer to robotic vehicles. They’ve placed and won the DARPA Urban Challenge with Stanley and Junior. They’ve also modified a Audi TTS named Shelley that will soon be sent out to climb Pike’s Peak on its own. The autonomous valet parking is just one aspect of a greater effort to create fully autonomous vehicles. As object recognition software improves, and decision making capabilities are refined, cars will become capable of increasingly complex driving routines. The prize money offered in the Urban Challenge ($2 million USD) is undoubtedly fueling some of the interest, but you have to think that at some level researchers are just excited about creating robotic cars.

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