General Motors and Carnegie Mellon University have decided to continue the work that resulted in victory in the DARPA Urban Challenge last year. The school and the automaker are establishing a collaborative research lab to continue the work they have done on autonomous driving. The lab will be located on-site at CMU in Pittsburgh, PA and will work directly GM Global R&D. Carnegie Mellon has worked on autonomous vehicles since 1984 and GM has been a part of the program since 2000.

Automonomous vehicles have the potential for fuel consumption and emissions reductions by removing the biggest variable in the vehicle control loop, the driver. The combination of autonomous vehicle control with vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastucture communications could improve traffic flow. Because such systems can "see ahead" and react more quickly than most drivers, they may be able to avoid a lot of the stop-start behavior that often triggers traffic jams. This would allow occupants to get to their destinations more quickly and emit less in the process. GM's press release is after the jump.

We've been taking a close look at many of the vehicles created for various DARPA challenges, and it finally appears as if some of the new technology gained by these trials is trickling down into the real world. For instance, you're likely aware of new technologies such as lane-departure warning and adaptive cruise control which add a touch of safety and a bit less driver control to your daily commute. If you like this idea but want to go all the way, TORC will be offering its autonomous wares for about sixty grand. Also needed will be a donor vehicle, specifically a Ford Escape Hybrid. The company claims that this vehicle makes an excellent starting point due to its on-board batteries, rugged structure and plenty of cargo space. After the cost of the hybrid is accounted for, the total investment in a self-driving car is still less than a hundred grand, which is pretty impressive for such technology.

[Source: CNET]

The mavens at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are always up to something interesting. The latest project out of the MIT AgeLab is the Aware Car. What looks like a conventional Volvo to the casual observer is in fact bristling with sensors. All modern cars have sensors aplenty. However most of those are used to monitor what the vehicle is doing in addition to the ambient conditions. The Aware Car is designed to monitor the driver. The intention is for the vehicle systems to track what the driver does and learn what the normal state for a given driver is.

When the drivers behavior is deemed to have deviated from the norm by more than a certain amount, such as if a driver is ill, tired or injured, the car's control systems automatically adjust the vehicle responses to compensate. This vehicle would use some of the types of technology used in the autonomous vehicles seen in the DARPA Urban Challenge. The experimental vehicle was devised to help older drivers but the same technology could be used to improve safety for younger inexperienced drivers and also to improve fuel efficiency. A vehicle could be automatically programmed to perform some of the techniques already employed by hypermilers to get the most out of a hybrid system. Unfortunately, the technology is still at least two decades away from real applications. Programming a system to monitor the widely varying behavior of a human to learn patterns and then be able to adjust a vehicle's behavior is an incredibly complex task.

[Source: Boston Globe, thanks to Rick for the tip!]

So far on AutoblogGreen, we have brought you stories on boats which use only alternative forms of energy, like solar or wind, or both. Those boats are energy autonomous; we have brought you cars which are energy autonomous too. We have even brought you cars which need no drivers. But, as far as I know, this is the first time we've brought them all together to bring you energy autonomous boats which need no drivers. So, here they are. These boats are part of the Microtransat Challenge, a transatlantic race of fully autonomous sailing boats which can use nothing but wind power.

As always, there are rules to the competition, and the entries will be judged according to a preset list of criteria. The rules seem pretty easy, but the actual competition is sure to be quite difficult. If it wasn't hard enough to cross the Atlantic using only wind power, it is sure to add a major headache doing it hands-off. I do not look forward to the day when our cars are capable of driving themselves, but I don't have bad feelings when it comes to boats for whatever reason. I guess I wouldn't mind if a taxi had no driver, and these tests of autonomous vehicles are, in effect, trials of just such a technology. Wind powered driver-less ferries and solar powered taxi's sound just fine to me, how about you?

[Source: The Microtransat Challenge via Engadget]