You may remember news from November last year about a driverless Audi TTS being prepared to conquer Pikes Peak. Stamford University are providing the technology required to achieve this goal and they recently ran an article on their online newsletter giving some further background on the car they’ve named ‘Shelley’.
Even better than that, there is also a YouTube clip of the car being put through its paces (available after the jump). The Stanford team have even taken the car to the Bonneville Salt Flats and “driven” the car at speeds in excess of 200km/h.
Not content with merely driving Miss Daisy to the summit, the Stanford crew want Shelley to tackle the hill climb at race pace. Chris Gerdes, leader of the graduate research team says, “Our goal is to show that we can do this.
“There are some sheer drops at Pikes Peak in which any sort of self-preservation kicks in and you slow down a bit. We want to go up at the speed that few normal drivers would ever think of attempting.”
Nice! Shelley’s attempted run up Pikes Peak is scheduled for September.
[Source: Stanford University News]
5 replies on “Blind faith”
I hope it isn’t running Windows!!
The Blue Screen of Death could mean exactly that….. 😉
BSOD jokes are so 1995.
This just reinforces to me how good the human brain is. Driving a car at warp speed, over a variable surface with lots of variables and distractions is not easy. Getting a computer to rid up pikes pace at 30km would be a major achievement.
What they need is to get Walter Rohl (now that he works for VAG) to set a time on the car, then let the computer run wild. I would be very shock if they can match Walter’s time!
I know a lot of us would love to check out the audi rings on google earth if someone has cordinates????