A Robot driving competition, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was won by a team from Carnegie Mellon. The race highlighted the great advances in robotic technology, featuring such maneuvers as making a left turn in the face of incoming traffic, and even cheating a little to get out of tricky situations.

The prize was given to the vehicle that could maneuver a 60 mile course in under six hours in a simulated city. The vehicles were unmanned, and once started, should not require any human instructions before the race was completed. Many variables, including how well the vehicles adhered to California driving regulations were factored into the judgment, and it was always understood that the winning vehicle was not necessarily the one with the fastest time. (A robot designed by Stanford actually crossed the finish line first).

Ultimately, the contest demonstrated that there was a wide disparity in the capabilities of the robots, but that the most sophisticated models could in fact safely navigate an ordinary traffic situation as well as most human drivers. You can read more in Crashes and Traffic Jams in Military Test of Robotic Vehicles appearing in the New York Times, and in DARPA race pushes robotics forward in CNET News.com. View the robots in action in this PBS Videocast:

Poly engineering students are familiar with robots since they all have to design one as a course requirement in a first year class. The Poly bots must perform a complex task like disarming a bomb, retrieving objects and placing them in a certain location, or performing another series of tasks. Students interested in someday building their own robotic car for the Darpa competition may be interested in the Poly course ME 3483 Mechatronics.

The library has a wealth of resources, including the IEEE, ASME, Compendex databases that would be very helpful to budding robot designers.