Navlab is a series of

autonomous In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy, from , ''autonomos'', from αὐτο- ''auto-'' "self" and νόμος ''nomos'', "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's ow ...

and semi-autonomous vehicles developed by teams from The Robotics Institute at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. Later models were produced under a new department created specifically for the research called "The Carnegie Mellon University Navigation Laboratory". Navlab 5 notably steered itself almost all the way from Pittsburgh to San Diego.

History

Research on computer controlled vehicles began at

Carnegie Mellon Carnegie may refer to: People *Carnegie (surname), including a list of people with the name *Clan Carnegie, a lowland Scottish clan Institutions Named for Andrew Carnegie * Carnegie Building (Troy, New York), on the campus of Rensselaer Polyte ...

in 1984 as part of the DARPA

Strategic Computing Initiative The United States government's Strategic Computing Initiative funded research into advanced computer hardware and artificial intelligence from 1983 to 1993. The initiative was designed to support various projects that were required to develop ma ...

and production of the first vehicle, Navlab 1, began in 1986.

Applications

The vehicles in the Navlab series have been designed for varying purposes, "... off-road scouting; automated highways; run-off-road collision prevention; and driver assistance for maneuvering in crowded city environments. Our current work involves pedestrian detection, surround sensing, and short range sensing for vehicle control." Several types of vehicles have been developed, including "... robot cars, vans, SUVs, and buses."

Vehicles

The institute has made vehicles with the designations Navlab 1 through 10. The vehicles were mainly semi-autonomous, though some were fully autonomous and required no human input. Navlab 1 was built in 1986 using a Chevrolet

panel van A panel van, also known as a blind van, car-derived van (United Kingdom) or sedan delivery (United States), is a small cargo vehicle with a passenger car chassis, typically with a single front bench seat and no side windows behind the B-pillar. ...

. The van had 5 racks of computer hardware, including 3 Sun workstations, video hardware and GPS receiver, and a

Warp Warp, warped or warping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Books and comics * WaRP Graphics, an alternative comics publisher * ''Warp'' (First Comics), comic book series published by First Comics based on the play ''Warp!'' * Warp (comics), a ...

supercomputer. The vehicle suffered from software limitations and was not fully functional until the late 80s, when it achieved its top speed of . Navlab 2 was built in 1990 using a US Army HMMWV. Computer power was uprated for this new vehicle with three Sparc 10 computers, "for high level data processing", and two 68000-based computers "used for low level control". The Hummer was capable of driving both off- or on-road. When driving over rough terrain, its speed was limited with a top speed of . When Navlab 2 was driven on-road it could achieve as high as Navlab 1 and 2 were semi-autonomous and used "... steering wheel and drive shaft encoders and an expensive inertial navigation system for position estimation." Navlab 5 used a 1990

Pontiac Trans Sport The Pontiac Trans Sport is a minivan marketed by the Pontiac division of General Motors over two generations for model years 1990-1999 along with GM badge engineered variants, the Chevrolet Lumina APV and Oldsmobile Silhouette. Introduced a y ...

minivan. In July 1995, the team took it from Pittsburgh to San Diego on a proof-of-concept trip, dubbed "No Hands Across America", with the system navigating for all but 50 of the 2850 miles, averaging over 60 MPH. In 2007, Navlab 5 was added to the Class of 2008 inductees of the

Robot Hall of Fame The Robot Hall of Fame is an American hall of fame that recognizes notable robots in various scientific fields and general society, as well as achievements in robotics technology. The organization was established in 2003 by the School of Comput ...

. Navlabs 6 and 7 were both built with Pontiac Bonnevilles. Navlab 8 was built with an

Oldsmobile Silhouette The Oldsmobile Silhouette is a minivan manufactured by General Motors for model years 1990–2004 over two generations. Production ended when General Motors discontinued its Oldsmobile brand in 2004. GM continued to market badge engineered v ...

van. Navlabs 9 and 10 were both built out of Houston transit buses.

References

External links

The Robotics Institute website

{{Autonomous cars and enabling technologies Experimental self-driving cars Carnegie Mellon University Robots of the United States 1986 robots 1990 robots 2007 robots

History

Applications

Vehicles

See also

References

External links