Driverless Car Laps Racetrack

The car can be driven by a human if need be, and a GPS system helps guide it around the track.

I

f a bunch of cars raced without any drivers, who would stand on the podium as the winner?

We don't know the answer to that question, since race cars have a human behind the wheel piloting them around the track. But one Audi TTS took to the track without a driver recently.

2012 Audi TTS

Students and faculty at Stanford took the car to Thunderhill Raceway in Willows, CA to test it out. The Engineering Department took the car to the track not to see if it could run faster lap times than the pros, but instead to test technology such as anti-skid systems.

The car can be driven by a human if need be, and a GPS system helps guide it around the track.

Associate professor Chris Gerdes said the goal was to use the data gleaned from the car to improve stability control and traction control systems in mainstream production cars.

Stanford students provided much of the labor, while Volkswagen and Audi sponsored the project. The computer hardware cost around $150,000.

The project is in its fourth year, and the car has been dubbed "Shelley," after Michelle Mouton, who became the first woman to win the Pike's Peak Hill Climb race, doing so in 1985 while driving an Audi Quattro.

Even though the Audi has gone as fast as 150 mph without a driver, Thunderhill exec David Vodden took a few laps behind the wheel while wired up to equipment that measured his brain waves and other biological responses, in order to get a sense of how race car drivers operate, with the idea that that knowledge could help improve the car's computer system.

[Source: Appeal-Democrat]