Photos of MIT’s DARPA Urban Challenge Car

After interviewing MIT researchers Jonathan How and Seth Teller for my story “MIT Plans to Win DARPA Robot Car Challenge,” I snapped a few pictures with my iPhone. For captions, click on the individual photos in the slide show.

First, you’lll see a few shots of the car itself, carrying a phalanx of radars, video cameras, laser range detectors and other sensors on metal frames attached to its body. Then there are a couple of pictures of the interior of the car, showing the navigational display on the operator (passenger) side and the racks of equipment, including 10 quad-core computers and a gasoline-powered generator, crammed into the back. The remainder of the photos show various recorded data playing back on the navigational display, including data from an outing on real city streets (green circles with objects detected by the LIDAR in red) and on a test course (green circles with white and purple lines showing lane markers).

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Author: Wade Roush

Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco. Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.) I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia. I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats. My personal site: waderoush.com My social media coordinates: Twitter: @wroush Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967 Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/ Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/