Robocar Teams and Projects

This is a list of major self-driving vehicle projects. If you have a team not listed here with an operating vehicle send me E-mail.

Projects tend to fall in two classes.

1. Most automotive vendor projects are akin to a steering cruise control, which drives the car in certain situations but requires the human maintain attention on the road and take the wheel quickly if the system departs its lane due to poor quality lane markers or other such problems. These projects tend to be the result of work in ADAS (Advanced Driver Assist Systems.)
2. Most of the academic teams, and Google, seek to produce a system where the person in the driver's seat can ignore the road -- either for the entire trip, or until notified by the system with reasonable warning. Most teams also aspire to a full door-to-door system which needs no or almost no human attention, and can even operate an empty vehicle. While the DARPA grand challenges involved empty vehicles, all existing projects involved manned testing with unmanned operation occuring rarely or never. Military drone projects more frequently involve unmanned operation.

Google

Google's sleek cars have driven over 300,000 miles on public streets, handling highways, traffic, merging, pedestrians, traffic lights, cyclists and more. You will find many articles in the mainstream press on this effort. You can also read a short article on the Google car I wrote before I joined this team as a consultant.

In March 2012, Google released a video of the car running errands on city streets with a blind man in the driver's seat as a demonstration.

Mercedes

Mercedes had announced that the 2013 S-Class will feature an autopilot for stop-and-go traffic which would be the first commercially shipped self-driving vehicle. This system is a combination of automatic cruise-control and enhanced lanekeeping, and works only under 40 km/h. However, the vehicle was released without this feature.

They have made a more firm announcement that the 2014 S class will offer this function, but at full driving speeds.

Mercedes also has more advanced projects in the works, including a multi-camera stereo system aimed at viewing the 3-D world better than ordinary stereo. (They called this 6-D) Mercedes has also done some unusual concept demos of the self-driving world of the future, but they are not product driven.

Toyota

In late 2011, Toyota announced their AVOS system and provided demonstrations of their concept. Their initial vehicle featured self-delivery and parking, but they have plans for more. The vehicle features 4 different lasers (type not named, but Toyota has published several papers on internal LIDAR development) instead of the spinning Velodyne.

Toyota also produced a video of the future robocar world.

Toyota also showed a more prototype-level car at CES 2013. This car had a Velodyne as well as many radars and other sensors. They claimed it was part of a project to develop better ADAS.

Audi/Volkswagen

Volkswagen was the first company to announce a self-driving car product named Temporary Auto Pilot, however they have not given a firm ship date and it is suggested it's still several years away in a VW, though they have given demos. Like several other products, it is a merger of ACC (Automatic Cruise Control) and lane-keeping, though they have said it will work at highway speeds.

Much closer to the present, the Audi division quietly stated at CES 2012 that an upcoming Audi will feature a similar system for speeds under 60 kph (ie. traffic jam autopilot.)

They demonstrated both the highway traffic jam assist and a self-parking car at CES 2013. Audi calls the technologies "Piloted Parking" and "Piloted Driving."

VW works closely with the Stanford robocar team and funded the VAIL lab there.

An Audi TT was modified by Stanford to climb Pikes Peak, including drifting while doing corners on dirt surfaces. This vehicle used enhanced GPS for navigation and was only suitable for closed course operation.

Audi received a Nevada autonomous vehicle testing licence (#007) -- the first car maker to do so.

General Motors

The General Motors EN-V is a semi-working concept car with many futuristic features. It's a two-wheeled balancing electric vehicle and features platooning and some limited obstacle avoidance and self-driving. They have also produced advanced concept videos showing a city of the future based around the EN-V.

I haven't written much about the EN-V, though I have sat in it and seen it move around. Here's a GM page about it

GM was the sponsor of BOSS, the CMU car that won the Darpa Urban Challenge in 2007.

GM has announced it is developing a "lane center" system that will keep a car centered in the lane, and can combine with automatic cruise control.

Cadillac is testing a "Super Cruise" technology which combines many ADAS and lane-maker based steering which they plan to market mid-decade. There is a more detailed interview on super-cruise.

BMW: Highly Automated Driving

BMW has projects under different names. Most recently, they have released a video of their ConnectedDrive Connect car which has done 5,000km on the Autobahn and 12,000 miles on test track, making it one of the top real-world cars other than Google's.

I also have brief reports on their plans and the course-following 330i on the test track.

Strangely, BMW has in other public statements disavowed autonomous driving and believes it will not sell such a car for many years. This ambiguous view is common to the high-end car makers, who sell cars on both "joy of driving" and also on luxury. Self-driving is seen as an important luxury car feature, but the companies do not wish to diminish their sports car cred.

Nissan

Nissan has mostly promoted concept vehicles. Their "Pivo" which has 4 wheel steering for ultra-tight turns was shown at the 2012 Tokyo Motor Show with .

Their research labs have also released results from time to time, such as this school-of-fish algorithm.

More recently, Nissan has demonstrated a LEAF doing self-parking in parking lots and an autonomous steering system which is able on the test track to drive around a surprise obstacle. The leaf had the number 2015 on it, suggesting a release year.

Nissan also declared that self-driving cars would be in showrooms in 2020.

Volvo

Volvo has for some time been selling a MobileEye based "CitySafe" line of safety features with automatic pedestrian avoidance systems, which use cameras to classify vehicles and pedestrians, and will hit the brakes for you if you're about to hit one. This is already shipping in the S60 and is in all new Volvos.

Sadly, this system suffered some terrible setbacks in demos when they forgot to turn on one part of the system in a press demo and it slammed into a wall it was supposed to brake for.

In October 2013, Volvo announced their 2014 models would begin to feature a traffic jam assist under 50km/h.

Continental

Continental of Germany, a top OEM supplier, has driven a Passat they modified 6,500 miles. In late 2012 they had hit 10,000 miles and received a Nevada testing licence. Their system has 5 radars and 2 stereo cameras.

Ford

Ford has announced a traffic-jam-assist style prodict for mid decade. Executive chairman Bill Ford gave a speech in March 2012 in Barcelona outlining Ford's work in cooperative driving (using vehicle to vehicle communications) and stating that self-driving cars will be available in 2025. A Ford car was used by Virginia Tech in the Urban Challenge.

Honda

Honda released a self-steer cruise control in London in 2006 (!) called the "Accord ADAS" as shown in this video. It refuses to let you take your hands off the road for only a limited time and sounds an alarm otherwise. There are some reviews. The LKAS (lanekeep) continues to be available in this mode.

Honda showed a concept car called the AC-X at the Tokyo Motor show that said it had an automatic drive mode" button, but without technical details.

Porsche & Others

While no robocars plans have been seen from Porsche, they are developing a learning ACC that comes to know the shape of the road. I've seen no published reports about Mazda, Subaru, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Kia/Hyundai, Peugeot or directly from Renault -- except in concept cars.

Fiat/Chrysler's Dodge division has actually run TV ads about the evils of self-driving cars

Chumdancha

The small Korean company Chumdan Cha makes lane departure systems and other ADAS tools. They have been doing demos for some time of highway driving using these systems. The demos show either extreme confidence or perhaps what might be called recklessness, in that the operator removes his feet entirely from the pedals so that he could not brake in an emergency, and even leaves the seat entirely while on the highway.

MobilEye

The Jerusalem company Mobileye produces camera based systems for ADAS. Their products do many self-driving related tasks, such as tracking vehicles, identifying pedestrians and tracking lane-markers on the road. Their tool is a key ingredient to many of the ADAS systems of the big manufacturers and presumably are used in the autonomous efforts.

In October 2012, they announced a prototype modification of an Audi A7 with 5 cameras and radar able to do highway driving. They will presumably market this to their car vendor customers, which include most of the majors.

HAVEit

The HAVEit project involved 17 different partners working on next generation ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems.) A number of these projects led to the early generation, driver-monitored systems coming from European car companies.

Academic Teams

There are a number of academic teams:

Stanford Junior & TT

The Stanley car from Stanford won the Darpa Grand Challenge in the desert and Junior placed a close 2nd in the Urban Challenge. Since then this has continued as a very active academic lab, demonstrating more advanced versions of Junior, including a valet-parking car with minimal sensors.

Volkswagen funded the VAIL lab at Stanford, and that team modified an Audi TT to climb Pikes Peak.

Chinese National University of Defense Tech

Various projects are underway in China. One that got some press was a machine-vision driven car that has done some distance on real highways there. Reportedly some of this is based on the research of Ernst Dickmanns, one of the earliest pioneers in the technology.

There is also another story of further development indicating a planned trip from Beijing to Shenzen.

It should be noted that Volvo now has Chinese ownership.

Another project at China's First Auto Works looks to do some self-driving car research. FAW has investment from several global car companies as well.

AutoNOMOS of Berlin

At the Free University of Berlin they have produced a few self-driving cars, and done some driving on regular streets. The AutoNOMOS lab and their car "Made in Germany" have done a number of cute demos, including summoning a car by iPad.

Vislab of Milan

While most projects rely on high resolution LIDAR, the team at Vislab in Italy have been more interested in machine vision. As a test, they had a convoy of 4 cars drive from Milan to Shanghai in 2011. As there are barely maps of those roads, they had the lead car map while the car behind followed. Their web site has various details and photos.

CMU

The CMU Tartan Racing team won the 2007 Darpa Urban Challenge with BOSS. Some of the best of that team went on to Google, and there's been surpisingly little in the way of announcements from this advanced group. In 2011 they published experiments in building cooperating cars and using formal proof methods to assure quality in the driving software.

They have done a project to make a self parking car.

Oxford Wildcat

At Oxford, a very different car, called the Bowler Wildcat features a unique custom LIDAR. It is a collaboration with BAE Systems. It has mostly been tested off-road.

IRSEEM Quasper / Renault

In France, an effort known as Quasper involves Renault and the labs IFSTTAR and IRSEEM.

Technical University of Braunschweig

The Stadtpilot project from TU Brunswick is a successor to their Darpa Urban Challenge entry. The car has done some limited driving on real world streets as early as 2010.

Virginia Tech

The only finishing entry in the Darpa Urban Challenge to not use the Velodyne LIDAR was the entry from Virginia Tech. They have continued their research and collaborated with the National Federation for the Blind to do some demos from their blind driver challenge. In this case, the blind driver received audio cues from the LIDAR and actually did some of the steering.

Others

I am interested in reports of other teams. I have heard reports of teams in Singapore but have not seen their research. Small reasearch teams in India also exist.

Military Unmanned Vehicles

There is an active effort in producing unmanned vehicles for military use, however such projects do not frequently seek publicity. The AUVSI site tracks trends in military unmanned vehicles.

Related Efforts

• Sartre Road Train
• ULTra PRT has a small working PRT system with robotic cars on private guideway at Heathrow airport, guided by lasers to follow a curb. They have a new contract to build a larger system in Amritsar, India.
• The Masdar PRT built by 2GetThere Inc, has small robotic cars which follow buried magnets.
• The University of Texas, at Austin has a vehicle built for the Darpa urban challenge. They've also done test work on automated "reservation" based intersections that don't need traffic lights.