An excellent brain that pulls the world of automatic driving car is a graduate of "DARPA contest" across the board

Once used as "a thing of a dream", it has been thought that it will take a huge amount of time to realizeAutonomous driving vehicleHas achieved rapid progress in the early 2010s and is expected to actually run through the city around 2020. It is the driving force of AI and the advancement of computer technology including AI, and furthermore the background is that the competition of military technology development by DARPA (the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Bureau) that was held in the early 2000s It exists.

The PayPal Mafia of Self-Driving Cars Has Been at It a Decade - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-30/it-s-been-10-years-since-robots-proved-they-could-drive

The concept of autonomous vehicles themselves was never new and it was an idea everyone thought about when the car began to spread. However, how to make a computer carry out a series of actions that human beings actually observe with eyes, processing information heard with ears, making judgments, and developing them The high walls stood up, and the era in which people who could actually shape them did not show up continued.

It was said that the Afghanistan conflict that began in 2001 began to greatly advance its development. I can not forget the shocking sight that airliners collide with New York's World Trade Center Building in 2001America simultaneous terrorist attacksOccurred and the Taliban regime refused the delivery of Mr. Usama Bin Laden who was the mastermind, the United States-led coalition countries and northern allies sent troops to Afghanistan and fought a battle However, in the battlefield many military lives have been deprived of by landmines buried in every and every place. In one opinion, it is said that "the US military is particularly averse to the lives of soldiers", and in order to prevent the lives of soldiers from being robbed one after another America's aim was to achieve the goal of "development of autonomous driving vehicles" was. Even if a vehicle is blown up by stepping on a mine by mistake by running a vehicle that nobody is riding on automatically, the aim is to be able to protect only human life.

ByTodd Huffman

Thus began in 2004, the robot car race by DARPA "DARPA Grand Challenge"was. The first in 2004 and the second tournament in 2005 was to run a course of approximately 150 miles (about 240 km) in total set in the Mojave desert, but in the 2004 competition there was no finisher . On the contrary, even Carnegie Mellon University team, who ran the longest, had a total mileage of only "11.78 km".

As an aside, DARPA has stated that "investment will be the key to breakthrough technology to promote national security", and now the GPS and any ancestors of the Internet use DARPA What was created by. The development of robot technology is also one of the fields DARPA puts emphasis on.

The story returned, in 2004 the tournament distance of 11.78 km "The longest record" I blew out of the team "Carl Negie Mellon team" red team "used"SandstormVehicle called. It is a vehicle based on the military vehicle "Hanvy", a strong protective bar is added even to a sturdy Hanvei's body, and a tremendous number of sensors are loaded on the spring in a floating state on the vehicle It is. If you look carefully, you can see that the body has a lot of damage such as scooping around.


At the 2005 competition the following year, each team has made remarkable progress. All 23 cars that went to the finals traveled a greater distance than the previous year's "11.78 km", and five completed the 150 km course. The winning team at this time was the Stanford Racing Team at Stanford University and the vehicle called "Stanley" scored in 6 hours 54 minutes. Stanford University's Sandstorm is goaled in 7 hours and 5 minutes, which shows that it was a close result.

In the 3rd event "2007 Urban Challenge" held in 2007 two years later, change the course and complete a course of 96 km total extension built within the military premises assuming an urban area within 6 hours Was requested. In doing so, you can follow all traffic rules while meeting other vehicle lines and obstacles or joining in the car line, and the dolls that pedestrians jump out, so you can get rid of them without crashing It is also the point of judgment.

This competition attracted a lot of attention, and Google rally page got into the private jet as well. However, the race itself was extremely confusing, and teams that could not be started properly were in succession. The biggest reason was that the huge display installed on the course side was that it was interfering with the radio waves of GPS, and as soon as measures were taken, each team returned to normal, but the information of the course The race goes fumbling as it is racing in the place where little is given. In the following images shot at that time, you can see a glimpse of that one.

DARPA Urban Challenge (2007) - YouTube


As a result, the winner was the Chevrolet-Tahoe based vehicle "Boss" created by Carnegie Mellon University "Tartan Racing". Brian Salesky, who was in charge of software at the same team, looked back at the time and said, "DARPA did not allow anyone to jump and there was no way to see the whole course, and over the course of 6 hours, nobody knows what's going on I can not grasp, I seem to have a hole in my stomach, "I beg you, so I beg you to come back properly" I felt like praying. " After that, Mr. Salesky moved to Google "Argo" which develops autonomous driving vehicle through Google, and has acquired a billion dollar (about 113 billion yen) contribution from Ford of a car company.

The 2007 event is of great significance in the sense that it became a big turning point that leads to further development. Former DARPA Secretary Anthony Tether used the world's first airplane by Wright brothers as an example, "The first two meetings are like the moment the plane first flew the sky in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina But the 2007 tournament was like when Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris in "Spirit of St. Louis", the first moment people began to think that "This is a business" "I look back on the meaning of that moment. And it was this time that Google started investing in autonomous vehicles with funds.

Until then, the realization of autonomous vehicles was said to be "around 2030 to 2040", but that time will be rapidly advanced. It was the driving force behind the talented nests from each team that participated in the tournament. The development of autonomous vehicles will be promoted by "DARPA challenge alumni", Jesse Levinson who is from Stanford University and entrepreneurship of "Zoox" in 2014, Kevin Peterson of Carnegie Mellon University team, later " In addition to Mr. Mike Montemerlo and Chris Urmson, Mr. Salesky mentioned above, Google's development team leading to Waymo was acquired by Uber shortly after the establishment of "Otto", and in the midst of litigation over intellectual property rights with Google Anthony Levandowski, who is located in the center of Tokyo, is in a state of keystroke in this field.


The situation is a genius entrepreneur group that PayPal produced by Mr. Earon MaskPaypal MafiaIt is said to be said to be an autonomous vehicle version of the vehicle. Interesting development competition will continue, as the team of universities who once competed for talent now becomes a company to further refine the technology, who will first realize fully autonomous driving vehicles.