MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–Junior, the robot Volkswagen, passed its basic driver’s test here Thursday.Now comes the hard part: a race on mock city streets that will raise the bar for artificial intelligence in the 21st century.

A team of officials from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) visited a parking lot here next to Google headquarters to test Stanford University’s autonomous passenger car, Junior, in what was its first big qualifying test for the upcoming Urban Challenge, DARPA’s third Grand Challenge competition for driverless vehicles.

DARPA will make so-called “site visits” this summer to evaluate all 53 prospective Urban Challenge contestants, homing in on whether the robots can perform basic driving skills, including navigating a four-way stop with live traffic, passing a stationary car and executing a U-turn.

“It’s a steep ladder to get up to the Urban Challenge. What you saw today was the first rung of the ladder,” Norm Whitaker, program manager for DARPA, said to a crowd of people following a two-and-a-half-hour test of Stanford Racing Team’s Junior.

Read the full article:

• Stanford robot passes driving test | CNET News.com

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It’s Alive!

Say hello to Pleo. From the guy who brought you Furby, it’s a snuffling, stretching, oddly convincing robotic dinosaur. You are so going to want one.

By Clive Thompson

WHEN I FIRST MEET PLEO, the tiny dinosaur is curled up on a kitchen table, its long tail and big head pulled inward. It’s snoring quietly, emitting a strangely soothing sound, almost like the amplified purring of a guinea pig. I’m tempted to reach out and touch it – but it looks so peaceful, I can’t bring myself to disturb it. | Then I realize what I’m doing: I’m worrying about waking up a robot. | Caleb Chung seems to understand my reluctance. “It’s OK,” the toy’s inventor says, motioning to the little green lizard. “You can touch him.” But before I do, Pleo wakes up on its own, fluttering open its doelike eyes and lifting its head. There’s a barely perceptible whizzing as its 14 internal motors spring into action and it struggles upright, stretching itself to get the kinks out. “You know, all your dogs do that,” Chung says as Pleo begins to poke around the table. “They wake up in the morning and go ‘ummmm’ – just like that.” The dino lets out a long, creaky honk.

“I think he wants to play,” Chung suggests, so I tentatively stroke the nubbly rubber skin on its back. It moos happily. A laptop on the kitchen table is monitoring Pleo’s internal state. As I trigger the touch sensors embedded in the toy, its “arousal” numbers start rising: 16, 23, 27, 28. It’s like a Matrix view of Pleo’s subconscious. I poke its left leg, and it cranes its neck curiously to see what just happened. I’m impressed. This feels less like interacting with a piece of machinery and more like playing with a kitten.

Chung knows how to create emotional connections to toys. Ten years ago, the bushy-haired, hyperkinetic inventor conceived Furby, selling more than 40 million of the yammering gremlins in a worldwide craze that launched the now-booming industry of robotic pets. A string of artificial companions have since trundled off the production line: the FurReal cat, the Roboraptor, the Robosapien, the Aibo and its litter of me-too electronic pooches. Household robots have arrived – not as servants doing our laundry but as helpless, babylike things that demand we take care of them.

Read the complete article at Wired Magazine.

• Wired 15.01: It’s Alive!
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December 8, 2006. DARPA Finalizes 2007 Urban Challenge Cash Prize Levels Top Three Finishers to Receive $2 Million, $1 Million and $500,000 Prizes The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will give $2 million, $1 million and $500,000 awards to the top three finishers that complete the course within the sixhour time limit in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge for autonomous robotic ground vehicles, competition organizers announced today.

DARPA’s original cash prize authority for the first two Grand Challenges expired with the passage of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. DARPA had planned to award trophies to the top three finishers in the Urban Challenge, but Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Kenneth J. Krieg approved $2 million, $1 million, and $500,000 cash prizes for the first, second and third teams to complete the Urban Challenge’s 60 miles within six hours.

• Darpa Grand Challenge

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