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New Volkswagen Touran sports automatic parking
Joining the lengthening list of automakers giving folks a break when it comes to parking in those tight spots, Volkswagen has announced that its upcoming Touran van will be the company's first vehicle to include ParkAssist. Utilizing those spiffy ultrasonic sensors on the front and rear of the automobile, a control unit determines the available space and best suited trajectory to maneuver the vehicle into a parking spot. "Acoustic and visual displays" help guide the (probably overwhelmed) driver into the correct starting position, and once he / she throws it in reverse, ParkAssist takes over. As the system's name implies, it's not fully autonomous, and the system still requires you to apply acceleration / brakes while it handles the steering end of it. While this may not be as adventurous as riding shotgun in a vehicle on autopilot, the promise of parking within 15 seconds of ParkAssist kicking in is rather impressive, and you can expect this fancy (and likely costly) option to be available beginning June 2007.[Via Gizmag]
Scientists to launch underwater autonomous robot fleets
You might want to watch where you wade while at Montego Bay, California this month, as a fleet of sea-searching robots will be on the prowl collecting all sorts of data. The Adaptive Sampling and Prediction (ASAP) team, led by Naomi Ehrich Leonard of Princeton University and Steven Ramp of the Naval Postgraduate School, is using two types of water-repelling robots that rely on algorithms to make maneuvering decisions without human input (which is a common theme of late) so as to collect information that will hopefully explain the cold water upwelling that occurs at Point Año Nuevo this time of year. The bots, known as gliders, look strangely like homing missiles, but they have some fairly important non-destructive duties ahead of them: collecting temperature, salinity, and other aspects of the currents are all in the job description. This field experiment is hopefully just the beginning of sending these independent machines out to quench our thirst for exploration; the team envisions these self-motivated creatures combing the floors of deserts, rain forests, and even other planets where humans aren't exactly primed to visit. Presumably all systems are go on this deep-sea endeavor, but we still wonder if there's an override command should these aquatic dwellers get smart and decide they'd rather just swim with the fishes than work all day.
Indie dev speaks about Virtual Console
The VGM podcast was able to snag an interview with Shayne Guiliano of Autonomous Productions, a developer who's primary focus has been games for the mobile market (see: cellphones). In moving to Xbox Live Marketplace and Virtual Console distribution, his company's debut title is Butterfly Garden, a game that didn't have any details revealed in this episode of the podcast, but there is to be more installments that will shed light on the game. Instead, Shayne talks about improving games that are ported over to Nintendo's service (adding multiplayer to Metroid?!) and sees Nintendo backing more and more indie developers such as his company in the future.
CMU's Crusher military bot rumbles onto the scene
Although not quite as stealthy as some of the other spybots that we've seen, the 6.5-ton Crusher UGCV (Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle), with its 8,000-pound payload and one-kilometer range, is certainly more versatile than your typical robosnake or Packbot. Unveiled today by the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science's Robotics Institute, Crusher, like its predecessor Spinner, was commissioned by DARPA to provide combat troops with a durable cargo and surveillance option that can operate mostly autonomously even in rough terrain. Crusher is powered by a series of electric motors whose batteries are charged with a turbo diesel generator -- giving it a top speed of 26 miles-per-hour -- and manages to avoid obstacles using an array of cameras and ladar lidar. Although its first two years of service will be restricted to support role duties, Army and DARPA officials will use Crusher's performance during the probationary period to evaluate its potential use in combat as well. [Warning: PDF link]
