DARPA & Team Mojavaton

Cars driving themselves, pretty cool eh? This was the context for the most recent DARPA challenge. But first of all, what is DARPA? Well, it stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and they basically are advanced research for the American Military. A few years ago, they had a similar challenge for automated aircraft, which produced the "Predator", which is a fully automated spy plane which can detect enemy troop movement, and plot attacks. The latest challenge, which is to design a car which can drive by itself in an urban situation, detecting signs, traffic, and other obsticles like a normal human driver. This way, human lives wouldn't have to be put at risk in dangerous situations.

Team Mojavaton is a team which competed in the latest challenge out of Grand Junction. Their vehicle, a Nissan Xterra, did manage to succeed in the task, though they did not win the 2,000,000$ grand prize unfortunately. One of the most important (and expensive) parts of the vehicle was the velodyne laser rangefinder. This could actually detect objects up to about 300 feet using 64 lasers which spin on the top of the vehicle, and can detect the objects and their distance from the vehicle. Another important element is a powerful GPS system which tells the car it's exact location.