Stanley:
Stanley is a ‘robot’ vehicle that can inspect the landscape and pick the best drivable course to any predetermined location. Stanley is a customized Volkswagen Touareg that was created by five engineers from the Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab and 30 Stanford engineering faculty and students in 2004. Stanley is famous for winning an off-road robot competition (2005) sponsored by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA’s mission is to, “promote research in the area of autonomous vehicles”. The competition requires the robots to traverse 175 miles of desert in less than 10 hours, with no human involvement. Stanley won first place, completing the course in 6 hours and 54 minutes.
 |
| Stanley crossing the Mojave Desert. |
Stanley’s think tank includes: six Pentium M motherboards, custom software for planning and control, light detection and ranging, computer vision, and inertial navigation. Inertial navigation means that’s Stanley uses computers, motion sensors, and rotation sensors to constantly determine the position and velocity (speed and direction) of any moving objects that the robot may encounter. Stanley has five laser rangefinders, a monocular (each eye is separate) video camera, and radar for long range vision. Stanley has a turbocharged 5-cylinder in-line diesel engine (174 horse power) with a six speed automatic transmission.
Stanley was showcased at the Smithsonian in 2006 as part of an exhibit forecasting the future of automated highways and smart cars. Stanley doesn’t have much of a future, but companies are spending a lot of money making vehicles just like Stanley to continue research and development.
I encourage you to check out a video of Stanley in action at:
Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment