Karen Hoffmann – Science and Health Writing

Cars that drive themselves are certainly cool, but cars that could avoid potholes would be a godsend in a city like Pittsburgh.

With the latest Collaborative Research Lab (CRL) between General Motors and Carnegie Mellon, researchers aim to refine the autonomous driving technologies that were so spectacularly put to use in Boss, winner of the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. That competition between driverless vehicles took place over 55 miles of urban and suburban roads.

“The Urban Challenge was fantastic, but you couldn’t use Boss to get to work in the morning,” says Chris Urmson, a research scientist in the Robotics Institute. “This lab will deal more generally with pedestrians, traffic—the wide variety of situations you encounter in a normal day. It will produce a much more broadly capable vehicle.” More >