1. PAVE & the DARPA Challengesby
Alain L. Kornhauser, PhD Professor, Operations Research & Financial Engineering Director, Program in Transportation
Faculty Chair, PAVE (Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering)
Princeton University
Presented at
PAVE – Summer Workshop
Princeton, NJ
August 4-6, 2014

2. The DARPA Grand Challenges Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
DARPA Grand Challenge Created in response to a Congressional and DoD mandate: a field test intended to accelerate research and development in autonomous ground vehicles that will help save American lives on the battlefield.  The Grand Challenge brings together individuals and organizations from industry, the R&D community, government, the armed services, academia, students, backyard inventors, and automotive enthusiasts in the pursuit of a technological challenge.
The First Grand Challenge:  Across the Mojave, March 2004 Across the Mojave from Barstow, California to Primm, Nevada :$1 million prize.  From the qualifying round at the California Speedway, 15 finalists emerged to attempt the Grand Challenge.  The prize went unclaimed as no vehicles were able to complete more than 7.4 miles.
The 2005 Grand Challenge Multi-step qualification process: Site Visits, NQE – Semifinals, GC final event
132 miles through the Nevada desert. Course supplied as list of GPS waypoints. October 8, 2005 in the desert near Primm, NV.  Prize $2 million. 
The 2007 Urban Challenge Nov. 2007; 60 miles in an urban environment. Lane keeping, passing, stop-signs, K-turns “driving down Nassau Street”. Range of Prizes

3. 2005
2007
Link to Presentation
Not Easy
Old House
2005
2007

4. Prospect Eleven & 2005 Competition

5. the making of a monster

6. 2005 Grand Challenge

7. Objective Constraints Guiding Principles
Enrich the academic experience of the students
Constraints
Very little budget
Simplicity
Guiding Principles

8. a homemade set of gears to drive their pickup. I could see from the
“Unlike the fancy “drive by wire” system employed by Stanford and VW, Princeton’s students built
a homemade set of gears to drive their pickup. I could see from the
electronics textbook they were using that they were learning as they went.”

9. Fall 2004

11. Fall 2005

13. It wasn’t so easy…

14. (a video presentation)
Pimp My Ride
(a video presentation)

15. Long Video Through 205GC
Achievements in the
2005

16. Link to GPS Tracks

17. Participation in the 2007

18. Prospect12_TestRun

19. Substrate Cognition Actuation Perception Environment
These five elements interact as you can see here.
Perception includes all of the sensors used to perceive the surrounding environment, as well as the algorithms to process the incoming data.
Cognition includes algorithms that fuses the data from all the sensors into one coherent scheme, as well as the high- and low- level navigation routines that decides what actions the robot needs to take.
Actuation is responsible for carrying out those action, and includes physical actuators and the low-level routines to control them.
Of course, any action we take will change the environment around us, not to mention that environment changes of its own accord, so this whole process must get repeated in a loop.
Finally, we recognize that none of this processing could occur without an adequate hardware and software infrastructure in place. We call this architecture Substrate.
Now we’re going to take a closer look at how we’ve gone about implementing these steps.

20. Perception

21. MonocularVISION

22. Lane DETECTION

23. Lane DETECTION

24. StereoVISION

25. Obstacle DETECTION

26. Obstacle DETECTION

27. PrecisionGPS
MEMSIMU

28. Sensor FUSION

29. Cognition

30. Global and Local NAVIGATION

31. Actuation

32. Home-brewed ELECTRONICS

33. Mechanical ACTUATORS

34. Substrate

35. dual-core PROCESSING

36. Microsoft ROBOTICS STUDIO Was a mistake Now switched to thread safe Windows with C++

37. Today.. Continuing to work on Prospect 12
Vision remains our focus for depth mapping, object recognition and tracking
Objective is to pass NJ Driver’s Test.