Tartan Racing's Autonomous Car: The Future is Here

Tartan Racing is ready to prove to the world that self-driving cars are no longer a futuristic dream that we only see in movies. The company won the 2007 Darpa Urban Challenge last year, a open challenge for people to create fully autonomous vehicles. Many people from around the world came forward with their own version of an autonomous vehicle. However, only Tartan Racing came with something amazing and perhaps a prelude to what is to come in the near future from the company.

Creating the vehicle was tricky from the start. The company ran into many problems when it came to the communication between computer and car. Tartan Racing was able to execute tricky merging, passing and parking maneuvers, as special cameras and radars feed information to a complex computer, known as the brain. The brain is very important to the vehicle because it is programmed to understand a whopping 500,000 lines of code. The code enables the brain to make the right decisions about the best way to reach each desired destination.

Tartan Racing called the vehicle "Boss". "Boss" was able to drive through a staged obstacle course that featured sharp corners, cones, and difficult terrain. What was amazing about this vehicles is that it was capable of taking each corner up to 30 mph. The high velocity of speed, for an autonomous vehicle, enable "Boss" to finish nearly 20 minutes faster than any of the other vehicles who completed the same course. Observers and funders of the Darpa Urban Challenge were amazed by this and awarded Tartan Racing the grand prize.

Fast forward to late 2008 and the company is still working on the vehicle. They claim to have made the vehicle faster and "smarter". This because the company has worked hard towards implementing more code for the computer to read. The goal is to get the car on the road early in 2009 for the world to see. If the vehicle turns out to be as enhanced as the company claims to be, we could be seeing the emergence of the "future" car. Imagine being able to take a nap in your car as it drives you to your desired destination. The future truly is bright.

Sources:

www.tartanracing.com