Motorsport has always been an enabler for technological advancement, and the same applies to the autonomous driving industry. The team TUM Auton-omous Motorsports will participate in the Indy Autonomous Challenge in Octo-ber 2021 to benchmark its self-driving software-stack by racing one out of ten autonomous Dallara AV-21 racecars at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The first part of this paper explains the reasons for entering an autonomous vehicle race from an academic perspective: It allows focusing on several edge cases en-countered by autonomous vehicles, such as challenging evasion maneuvers and unstructured scenarios. At the same time, it is inherently safe due to the motor-sport related track safety precautions. It is therefore an ideal testing ground for the development of autonomous driving algorithms capable of mastering the most challenging and rare situations. In addition, we provide insight into our soft-ware development workflow and present our Hardware-in-the-Loop simulation setup. It is capable of running simulations of up to eight autonomous vehicles in real time. The second part of the paper gives a high-level overview of the soft-ware architecture and covers our development priorities in building a high-per-formance autonomous racing software: maximum sensor detection range, relia-ble handling of multi-vehicle situations, as well as reliable motion control under uncertainty.

Automating the design of urban environments via digital twinning software, moving from sustainable to circular economies and integrating micro-mobility or Mobility 2.0 into the transport mix are among the "strategy shifts" cities need to make, according to ABI Research. The analyst company also warns that a shift from "safe and secure cities" to "resilient cities" and a rethinking of the urban environment through smart spaces will be required. In its new whitepaper, 5 Ways Smart Cities Are Getting Smarter, ABI Research highlights that while smart city tech investments will reach over $61 billion globally in 2026, most of the expenditure will be for incremental improvements. "It is an illusion to believe that adding just a shallow layer of IoT (Internet of Things) technology to legacy urban environments will allow cities to address the urban challenges of the future, ranging from the provision of sustainable energy to the adoption of smart mobility and the construction of resilient cities," says Dominique Bonte, vice president at ABI Research. As they prepare to face new threats such as cyber-attacks and climate change, Bonte said this "new reality" requires new approaches, leveraging a range of new technologies to create true strategy shifts.

If federal prosecutors successfully prosecute Anthony Levandowski for 33 federal charges of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets, the self-driving engineer could face millions in fines and decades in prison. The accusations aren't new--they rehash the core of Waymo's civil case against Uber, which settled in February 2018--but their resurfacing in this format threatens to put a dismal end to a career remarkable for its range and variation. For nearly 20 years, the French-American Levandowski has played a kind of purposeful Forrest Gump for the world of autonomous driving. Rather than stumbling into the center of one momentous event after another, Levandowski has put himself there. And he has left a mixed trail in his wake: Former colleagues have described him as brilliant, engaging, motivating, fast-charging, inconsiderate, a weasel, and just plain evil.

DARPA stands for "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency," but while defense is good and all, what DARPA is really into is that P, for projects. The agency is focused on the development of breakthrough technology, and its sights are focused on the enormous potential of artificial intelligence. Its funding for AI projects is huge by any measure, and available to applicants far beyond the traditional defense community. As a 60th birthday present for itself, DARPA launched the AI Next campaign this past September, announcing a $2 billion investment applied to AI in a variety areas over a period of five years -- or about $400 million a year, says Brian Pierce, Director of the Information Innovation Office at DARPA. Anyone can participate in DARPA-funded programs by responding to an invitation for proposals on fbo.gov.

In the past five years, autonomous driving has gone from "maybe possible" to "definitely possible" to "inevitable" to "how did anyone ever think this wasn't inevitable?" Every significant automaker is pursuing the tech, eager to rebrand and rebuild itself as a "mobility provider" before the idea of car ownership goes kaput. Ride-hailing companies like Lyft and Uber are hustling to dismiss the profit-gobbling human drivers who now shuttle their users about. Tech giants like Intel, IBM, and Apple are looking to carve off their slice of the pie as well. Countless hungry startups have materialized to fill niches in a burgeoning ecosystem, focusing on laser sensors, compressing mapping data, and setting up service centers to maintain the vehicles. And cars that drive themselves are now everywhere.

In this article we introduce Boss, the autonomous vehicle that won the challenge. Boss is a complex artificially intelligent software system embodied in a 2007 Chevy Tahoe. To navigate safely, the vehicle builds a model of the world around it in real time. This model is used to generate safe routes and motion plans both on roads and in unstructured zones. An essential part of Boss's success stems from its ability to safely handle both abnormal situations and system glitches.

They are, it seems safe to say, just about everywhere--roaming the streets of San Francisco, New York City, Phoenix, Boston, Singapore, Paris, London, Munich, and Beijing. And as Waymo (Google's self-driving car project) launches the world's first fleet of truly driverless cars in Arizona, nearly every automaker, all serious tech companies, and a flock of startups are rushing to colonize an industry that has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives--and generate trillions of dollars. What retains its shock value is how quickly we've gotten here. Ten years ago, there was no reason to think the idea of being whisked about town by a collection of zeroes and ones while you napped or texted or watched TV was anything but the province of science fiction. Namely, the folks watching a group of robots roam an abandoned Air Force base outside Los Angeles, moving through intersections, merging into traffic, finding their own parking spaces, and more.

In an airplane hanger on MIT's campus in Cambridge last week, a team of engineering students and researchers put the finishing touches on Talos, a Land Rover that drives itself. Talos is MIT's entry in the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) robotic car race, which will take place on November 3, in Victorville, CA. Known as the Urban Challenge, the race will test the ability of robotic cars from 35 different teams to obey traffic laws and drive safely in a city-like environment without human assistance. The vehicles will need to find their way to a preprogrammed destination while paying attention to lane markers, other cars, and unexpected obstacles, such as potholes in the road. The Urban Challenge is a follow-up to DARPA's Grand Challenge race, held in 2004 and 2005, in which cars navigated an empty desert road.

The DARPA Urban Challenge was a competition to develop autonomous vehicles capable of safely, reliably and robustly driving in traffic. In this article we introduce Boss, the autonomous vehicle that won the challenge. Boss is complex artificially intelligent software system embodied in a 2007 Chevy Tahoe. To navigate safely, the vehicle builds a model of the world around it in real time. This model is used to generate safe routes and motion plans in both on roads and in unstructured zones. An essential part of Boss’ success stems from its ability to safely handle both abnormal situations and system glitches.