IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2008 - 36

allows computers to
depressions in the road,
When
control the gas, steerand detect whether
you're in any kind
ing, and brakes. But
the vehicle is going
of engineering-related
unlike the standarduphill or downhill.
field, you have to use
production Lotus,
They also both used
radar technology
creativity, and creativity which Insight Racing had to convert to
that could detect
is also the edge in the
a drive-by-wire vehicars driving ahead
entrepreneurial
cle, the AnnieWAY's
and those in oncomworld.
Passat was custom
ing traffic, as well as a
made so that it could
GPS navigation system and
switch between manual and
a "drive-by-wire" system, which
autonomous driving.
"I had to understand the
technical things on a basic
A ROBOTIC CHAUFFEUR IN THE CITY
level," says Lien, a specialist
The third DARPA Grand Challenge-the "Urban Challenge"-was a far cry from the agency's first two robotic car races.
in human-computer interacThe wide-open desert courses of the previous contests were traded for a 60-mile course in a city environment, simulattion with no engineering or
ed on a former Air Force base in California. In the desert races, cars simply had to stay on course and within the road
robotics background. "When I
boundaries. Now, they had to complete a series of missions that included parking, turning, and getting from one specific
was asked to be the team
point to another. And they had to do it all while following state traffic laws. It was a much trickier feat.
leader, at first I was surprised.... But they were basiROBOTS ARE PART OF THE TRAFFIC
cally going by, 'Who do we
Out of 35 semifinalists, 16 cars were disqualified and only 11 were selected for the final race on November 3, 2007.
know that we trust?' Gender
"The [National Qualification Event] tested the vehicles' capability to merge into traffic, navigate four-way intersections,
was not an issue."
respond to blocked roads, pass oncoming cars on narrow roads, and keep up with traffic on two- and four-lane roads,"

about how intense it was and how much
they could learn just being there."
It was at the Urban Challenge that
Randall came to know Annie Lien. Lien, a
contract worker at Volkswagen's Electronic Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, California, was the only woman to lead a
racing team. Like Insight Racing's Lotus,
Team AnnieWAY's car, a silver VW Passat,
was equipped with lidar (light detection
and ranging) sensors that can find obstacles around the car, look for curbs and

DARPA Director Tony Tether said in a written statement after six days of trial runs. "In fact, the only major difference
between the NQE and the final event is that other robotic vehicles will be part of the traffic in the final event."
Exactly what the courses looked like is kept secret, but by all assessments, they were complicated, replicating the
kind of terrain that many military missions encounter. "The courses were hidden from our view, so you don't know exactly what your car did when it was on the courses, and there was no scoring that was shared," says Mary Ellen Randall of
the Insight Racing team, whose car was neither disqualified nor chosen for the final race. "We were allowed to put a
camera on board that would record for analysis afterward, but there's no communication with the car during the race
whatsoever, other than from the DARPA officials who could turn them off if they felt it was dangerous. That was the only
remote interaction with the car-an emergency stopping capability. Even in the final race, you could see only bits of the
course because it was a long road."
NO MOVING VIOLATIONS
A time limit of six hours was set for the final race, and with none of the top three finishers losing any points for traffic
violations, it came down to which car finished fastest. The top prize of US$2 million went to Carnegie Mellon's Tartan
Racing team and its 2007 Chevy Tahoe. The Stanford Racing Team, which won the 2005 challenge, took home second
place and US$1 million with its Volkswagen Passat wagon, while Virginia Tech's Victor Tango team came in third with a
hybrid Ford Escape, earning US$500,000. Tether said in a press conference that the average speed of Carnegie Mellon's
car was about 14 miles per hour, while Stanford's car averaged about 13, and Virginia Tech's car was slightly slower,
making for about a 20-minute time difference from one team to the next. Three other cars completed the course, though
only one of them, MIT's Land Rover, within the time limit.
"Since teams successfully completed this race, I don't think they'll be another city race unless [DARPA's] looking for
something very specific," says Randall. "Their role, I think, is pretty much done unless they come up with some other
kind of gimmick. The cars can drive in the city and they can drive in the country; the technology has proven that it's
viable. Now it goes into normal kinds of commercialization and development."
-Heather Wax

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

SUMMER 2008

A Few Days
of Paperwork
It was back in 2006 that Lien
met German researchers
Sören Kammel and Ben
Pitzer at the Robert Bosch
Research and Technology
Center in Palo Alto. Kammel
and Pitzer wanted to start a
team for the robotic car race,
and they had the backing of a
number of German institutes
and universities working
together at the Collaborative
Research Center on Cognitive Automobiles, but the
official rules of the race
required that teams be based
in the United States and be
led by a U.S. citizen. So they
turned to Lien, assuring her
the job would entail only a
few days of paperwork.
Before long, however, she
was spending nights and

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