Human beats robot in automobile race
3 Nov 2012 6:36 AM IST
A race between a robot driven autonomous vehicle and a human driver has ended with a narrow win for the man.
The human driver completed a lap around the circuit a few seconds faster than the robotic car.
The race was run on Thunderhill Raceway in California between an Audi TTS that can drive itself and a racing car driver familiar with the circuit, the BBC reported.
Part of a research to develop control systems that will help to make domestic vehicles more autonomous, the robot car has been developed by researchers at the Centre for Automotive Research at Stanford University (Cars).
The autonomous vehicle 'Shelley' is fitted with sensors that work out its position on the road, feed back information about the grip of its tyres and help it plot the best route around the circuit.
Thunderhill was chosen because its 15 turns present the car's control systems with a wide variety of challenges, Prof Chris Gerdes, head of the Cars Lab at Stanford, said. Some corners can be taken at high speed, some are chicanes, others are sharp and come at the end of long straights down which the car hit a top speed of 185 kph.
The human driver completed a lap around the circuit a few seconds faster than the robotic car.
The race was run on Thunderhill Raceway in California between an Audi TTS that can drive itself and a racing car driver familiar with the circuit, the BBC reported.
Part of a research to develop control systems that will help to make domestic vehicles more autonomous, the robot car has been developed by researchers at the Centre for Automotive Research at Stanford University (Cars).
The autonomous vehicle 'Shelley' is fitted with sensors that work out its position on the road, feed back information about the grip of its tyres and help it plot the best route around the circuit.
Thunderhill was chosen because its 15 turns present the car's control systems with a wide variety of challenges, Prof Chris Gerdes, head of the Cars Lab at Stanford, said. Some corners can be taken at high speed, some are chicanes, others are sharp and come at the end of long straights down which the car hit a top speed of 185 kph.
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