Second place goes to...
In a pre-race briefing, Stanford Racing Team - the second-placed
Intel-sponsored outfit - explained how its car Junior perceives the
world and makes appropriate decisions based on the available sensor
data.
Previously-recorded sensor data being visualised
And here's Junior's simulation software
Junior
We also sat down to talk with Stanford's software lead Michael Montemerlo and Scott Ettinger, one of the Intel research scientists working with the team, to hear more about what was going on inside the car.
Junior runs on eight Intel cores – of which only five are used – but it wasn't made clear what CPUs are being run or even whether they're Core Duo or Quad.
Again, there's little left over from the car entered in the 2005 race – just the GPS system and some software.
Not surprisingly, the car's redundancy arrangements are similar to those in the winning Intel-sponsored Boss, though Stanford's estimate of Junior's reaction time was about a quarter of second – way slower than Boss's.
Perhaps also explaining Junior's second place, its sensors don't seem to be quite as good as those in Boss or, at least, as able to work in bad weather.
The team says that it's only tested in light rain and that things would start going wrong in heavy rain because of false reflections coming back to the sensors.
Another explanation for 'only' taking No.2 spot might be the money spent on developing the car – the team reckons that it would cost a mere half a million dollars to bring a standard showroom model up to Junior's specs!