Road Robots Are Coming to the Rescue

Developing cars that can drive without a human is a unique challenge. There are many kinds of events that fully autonomous vehicles have to be prepared to handle in milliseconds, and mistakes can have serious consequences. Solving these problems requires innovation across a number of fields, such as AI and machine learning, advanced sensors, simulation software that can mimic real-world driving, and computing frameworks to evaluate the system's performance. In 2007, I joined the Urban Challenge that was run by the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (Darpa) to test and develop autonomous vehicles (AVs). I vividly remember the first moment our car, Junior, drove by itself in the parking lot using software I was working on just hours before.