VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge
VIAC stands for VisLab[1] Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge and represents the more advanced challenge ever organized for autonomous vehicles. It is scheduled from July 10, 2010 to October 10, 2010 (3 months), involving 4 driverless vehicles driving without any human intervention on a 13,000 km trip from Parma, Italy to Shanghai, China[2].
Overview
The 2010 World Expo's theme is “better cities, better life”; issues related to sustainable mobility are indeed central to the Expo and the challenge of reaching Shanghai with driverless vehicles provides a clear milestone in Robotics.
VisLab is going to participate to the Expo with a project, partially funded by ERC -the European Research Council- to show that it is possible to move goods between two continents with non-polluting vehicles powered by green energy and with virtually no human intervention. Goods will be packed in Parma and taken to Shanghai on driverless vehicles for the first time in history.
The idea
The aim is to demonstrate that the current technology is mature enough for the deployment of non-polluting and no-oil based autonomous vehicles in real traffic conditions.
The first vehicle drives autonomously in selected sections of the trip, conducting experimental tests on sensing, decision, and control subsystems, and continuously collects data. Although limited, human interventions are needed to define the route and intervene in critical situations.
The second vehicle follows automatically the route defined by the preceding vehicle, requiring no human intervention (100% autonomous). This is regarded as a readily exploitable vehicle, able to move on predefined routes; at the end of the trip, its technology can be transferred to a set of vehicles to move in the inner part of cities in the close future.
During the trip, demonstrations are scheduled in specific hot spots, showing autonomous vehicles following given routes, negotiating traffic, avoiding obstacles, and stopping when required. The first demonstration was held in Rome at the EUR district on October 29, 2009, when Rome's Major, Gianni Alemanno, officially presented the VIAC challenge.