Big (and Little) Wheels Keep on Turnin'

As has been noted, I'm a motor scooter kind of guy. Which, for any number of reasons, makes me about as far removed from the emerging generation of vehicles as you can get.

Take the 60-foot long bus traveling on East 14th Street in San Leandro, California, a week or so ago. As far as buses go, it wasn't anything special--except that it didn't have a driver. Instead, it was traveling down the street via a magnetic guidance system, in which a series of magnets on the pavement were talking to special sensors and processors on the bus to control steering. Okay, a human did take care of braking and acceleration, but the steering was completely automated, allowing the bus to pull into stops to within a lateral accuracy of one centimeter. Still, in other tests the system has been used for full vehicle control--including braking and accelerating--creating a true "auto-pilot" system for the bus. The "Automated Bus Guidance System" project is funded by the California Department of Transportation and conducted by programs at the nearby University of California, Berkeley. According to engineers, the system allows for a bus to safely follow closely behind another in all kinds of weather and road conditions.

Not to be outdone, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have teamed up with engineers at Caterpillar to develop autonomous versions of large haul trucks used in mining operations. The CMU Robotics Institute will be developing self-driving versions of Caterpillar's two largest haul trucks, each with payload capacities of 240 tons or more. Plans call for autonomous trucks to be integrated into some mine sites by 2010. The CMU team will be adapting perception, planning, and autonomous software architectures it originally developed for a DARPA autonomous vehicle program and the DARPA Urban Challenge robot race. Caterpillar was a major sponsor of the CMU Tartan Racing team that won last year's $2 million Urban Challenge.

As for me, well, little wheels keep on turnin'.

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

Posted by Jon Erickson at 11:52 AM  Permalink