DARPA Urban Challenge Technical Report

with input from many other team members 6/1/2007 "DISCLAIMER: The information contained in this paper does not represent the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) or the Department of Defense. DARPA does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information in this paper." Austin Robot Technology's (ART's) entry in the DARPA Urban Challenge has two main goals. First and foremost, the team aims to create a fully autonomous vehicle that is capable of safely and robustly meeting all of the criteria laid out in the Technical Evaluation Criteria document [1]. Second, and almost as important, the team aims to produce, educate, and train members of the next generation of computer science and robotics researchers. This technical report documents our significant progress towards both of these goals as of May 2007 and presents a concrete plan to achieve them both fully by the time of the National Qualifying Event (NQE) in October. Specifically, it presents details of both our complete hardware system and our in-progress software, including design rationale, preliminary results, and future plans towards meeting the challenge. In addition, it provides details of the significant undergraduate research component of our efforts and emphasizes the educational value of the project.