Jump to content

VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 160.78.28.54 (talk) at 14:26, 6 May 2010. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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 test and stress the current technology in a unique event: non-polluting and no-oil based autonomous vehicles in real traffic conditions on an extreme journey between two continents.

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, since maps are not available in many areas.

The second vehicle automatically follows the route defined by the leader 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.


See also

References

  1. ^ Official VisLab Website
  2. ^ VisLab's Adventure on the Silk Road
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=VisLab_Intercontinental_Autonomous_Challenge&oldid=360525366"