From Automated Highways to Urban Challenges

This paper describes autonomous vehicle and driver assistance research beginning with the 1997 National Automated Highway System Consortium Demonstration. As a microcosm of the community at large we discuss how Carnegie Mellon autonomous vehicle research has progressed in the last decade. Since the demonstration we have formed two companies: AssistWare became a leading developer of lane departure warning systems; and, Applied Perception which emphasized off-road navigation and perception research. In parallel, we have competed in the DARPA Grand Challenges and won the Urban Challenge. Each of these endeavors has deepened our understanding of what it will take to broadly deploy autonomous vehicles.