The VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge : 13 , 000 km , 3 months , ... no driver

This document presents a new exciting effort in the intelligent vehicles arena which is going to set a new milestone in the history of vehicular robotics. Autonomous vehicles have been demonstrated able to reach the end of a 220 miles off-road trail (in the DARPA Grand Challenge), to negotiate traffic and obey traffic rules (in the DARPA Urban Challenge), but no one ever tested their capabilities on a long, intercontinental trip and stressed these systems for 3 months in a row. This paper presents the VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge that VisLab organized in 2010, during which 4 autonomous vehicles are driving from Italy to China with no human intervention. The challenge is taking place from July 26, 2010 to Oct 28, 2010, therefore being currently under execution, this paper can only describe the preparation and the technical details of the vehicles and the main challenges. INTRODUCTION The 2010 World Expo is being held in Shanghai, China, May 1-Oct 31, 2010. It is the third most relevant worldwide event after the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games. 70 millions visitors from all over the world are visiting the Expo. The 2010 Expo theme is ‘better cities, better life’; therefore issues related to sustainable mobility are indeed central to the Expo, which is a huge display of new ideas developed worldwide in this field. The Expo will constitute a great opportunity to showcase new and innovative technologies in the field of intelligent mobility, especially urban mobility.