GM, Carnegie Mellon collaborate on autonomous driving
General Motors and Carnegie Mellon University have collaborated on an autonomous vehicle which was entered in DARPA 2007 Urban Challenge competition; the now commit to expanding their collaboration with the aim of accelerating the emerging field of autonomous driving
General Motors and Carnegie Mellon University have a new Collaborative Research Lab (CRL) and a renewed commitment to work jointly on technologies which will accelerate the emerging field of autonomous driving — a family of electronics and software technologies that could influence the way drivers and their vehicles interact in the future. The GM-Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab is being established under the terms of a five-year, $5 million agreement. The lab will operate as an extension of GM’s Global Research & Development network and will be located at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. Faculty from the university’s School of Computer Science and College of Engineering will participate.
GM teamed with Carnegie Mellon last November to win first place in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge (see HS Daily Wire, 26 October 2007), a competition among driverless vehicles over a 55-mile course of urban and suburban roadways held in Victorville, California. The race was a historic event for personal transportation, and an emphatic proof point that autonomous technology is real — cars can drive themselves. In 2000 General Motors and Carnegie Mellon established their first CRL to conduct joint research in smart car technology and in 2003 that commitment to work together was renewed. The work of that CRL continues and, though it is separate from the new Autonomous Driving CRL, its success was a factor in the decision to launch the new CRL.
