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Robot car tech shifts into high gear

For its future combat system, the US government plans to build a family of 18 vehicle types that will be faster and lighter on the road. The group will include so-called drive-by-wire vehicles, as well as some with autonomous and semi-autonomous capabilities. Drive by wire is a car that can be driven without a steering wheel from an internal protected seat or from a remote location, but it is still human operated. The car, perhaps a supply vehicle, could be lightly armoured if driven remotely. A semi-autonomous vehicle, on the other hand, can be programmed to travel from A to B, or to follow another car.

The autonomous vehicle would be heavily armoured and could take GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates of the road and create a map of obstacles and pass that data back to the semi-autonomous truck. All this could help to keep soldiers out of the line of fire.

"There will be programmes in the next four or five years, such as tests of semi-autonomous or convoy vehicles in the military," said Bill Klarquist, vice president of engineering at PercepTek, a robotics company that has contracts with the government, Ford and others.

PercepTek creates software for perception planning and control. That's what the car observes about its environment, and given that information, how it will travel. The company develops technology that helps vehicles manage their speed, follow the road and avoid obstacles.

Carmakers are headed towards total drive-by-wire systems, the route airlines took roughly a decade ago. That means they take the physical actions of the driver, such as pressing the accelerator pedal, and turn them into digital messages for the car's central control system. Sensors measure how far the driver turns the steering wheel, for example, and translate that to a message to turn the wheels the appropriate amount. More sophisticated controls can be added for things like emergency braking and traction control.

Many modern cruise control systems already use drive-by-wire throttle functions. With the addition of radar and laser sensors, a car can measure the distance between it and one ahead of it. That way, carmakers can add 'adaptive cruise controls' that will regulate the speed of the car to maintain a safe distance between it and other vehicles.

Pricey models from Jaguar, Mercedes and Lexus are already offering that feature.

'Lane keeping' is another benefit of radar and laser sensors. The technology maintains a path down the centre of the road and alerts the driver when the car begins to drift into another lane. The feature is already used in the haulage industry, but General Motors has said it plans to offer the feature in cars by 2007.

"The issue is when you introduce new technology there's also the liability. You normally see cars like this introduced in Europe and Japan first, and as they're embraced there, the bugs and characteristics are worked out," Klarquist said.

Adaptive cruise was available in Germany long before it was in the US, he said.

In Japan, carmakers have already been testing systems that warn drivers if they're drifting too far out of a lane or if they are about to hit something.

"I think technologically, we're within five to ten years of having good systems for this," said Intel's Bradski.

PercepTek, which backed a robot in the Grand Challenge called Intelligent Design Systems, said that what it will gain from the race is the knowledge of how to use multiple sensors together for road and obstacle detection and avoidance. Commercially, that knowledge will inform what's called precrash applications.

With a combination of laser and radar sensors, a car system could 'see' an oncoming collision, if an object ahead was stopping at a faster speed than expected, for example. By detecting how fast the car is travelling in relation to another on the road, the car's system could prepare airbags or tighten seat belts. It could even regulate how the airbags inflate in relation to expected harm from the impact.

John Davidson, whose investment firm Mohr Davidow Ventures sponsored Stanley, predicts that within five years, sophisticated technology for collision avoidance will be in cars.

"Brake systems are already smart, and we'll slowly walk up this curve," Davidson said. "I'm skeptical about ever sitting in the back seat and pressing a button. But the technology has applicability in lots of commercial and industrial applications where autonomy is important."

Machine-learning technology has already touched industries like drug discovery, email processing and financial forecasting. But technology is still a long way from allowing an autonomous machine to handle every unpredicted situation that pops up. "The robot must be able to learn from a situation and think its way through the problem," Davidson said. "But there are other problems they have to solve, like dealing with contingencies. What if a computer dies?"