The 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge

The presentation describes the development of an autonomous vehicle system that participated in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge event. After a brief description of the event, the architecture, based on version 3.0 of the DoD Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS), and design of the system are presented in detail. In particular, the "smart sensor" concept is introduced which provided a standardized means for each sensor to present data for rapid integration and arbitration. Information about the vehicle design, system localization, perception sensors, and the dynamic planning algorithms that were used is then presented in detail. Subsequently, testing results and performance results are presented. Lastly, current activities related to the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge are presented.