Autonomous Driving in Traffic: Boss and the Urban Challenge

The DARPA Urban Challenge was a competition to develop autonomous vehicles capable of safely, reliably, and robustly driving in traffic. hi this article we introduce Boss, the autonomous vehicle that won the challenge. Boss is a complex artificially intelligent software system embodied hi a 2007 Chevy Tahoe. To navigate safely, the vehicle builds a model of the world around it in real time. This model is used to generate safe routes a;id motion plans both on roads and in unstructured zones. An essential part of Boss's success stems from its ability to safely handle both abnormal situations and system glitches.