Unmanned automobiles won the robot race

An unmanned car named Boss won $ 2 million at a robotics competition in California after crossing an 85-kilometer road in nearly six hours.

With the modified Chevrolet Tahoe, the Boss is one of six cars that crossed their destination, all in the 11th group of cars that entered the race starting early in the morning on November 4. Most robotic cars look similar to conventional cars on the highways, but many sensors are mounted on the roof, at each corner, and are mounted in the bumpers.

Boss runs the road with car drivers to simulate crowded traffic (Photo: BBC)

The race was organized by the United States Agency for Advanced Military Research (Darpa). Boss runs in a simulated city, created at an abandoned American air base in Victorville in the California desert. It had to run through the one-way and two-way streets, the intersections, avoiding the buildings and the parking lot. Just like the other 10 cars, Boss has run more than 30 vehicles with specialized drivers to simulate traffic with multiple vehicles. Each robot is guided by a rear-end driver equipped with a button that is designed to stop the robot immediately if it starts to operate incorrectly.

Boss was Tartan Racing, a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and General Motors, a car manufacturer. One of the key technical aspects of the award winning team is Lidar - a rotary laser scanner.

Larry Burns, GM's vice president of research and development, says he believes that this intelligent car will be able to travel on the highway by 2015.

Q.HUANG