Realizing complex autonomous driving maneuvers the approach taken by team CarOLO at the DARPA urban challenge

The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge has been a great opportunity to demonstrate the abilities of the Technische Universitat Braunschweig to develop an autonomous vehicle named Caroline and to show its capabilities in urban-like environments. Team CarOLO was among 11 of 89 teams who qualified for the final DARPA Urban Challenge early in the competition. This paper describes the approaches taken by team CarOLO for the realization of complex autonomous driving maneuvers. Compared to previous activities in autonomous driving this is the first venture to require fully autonomous vehicle guidance in an urban environment: all previous projects have focused on navigating deserts and highways. Completely new concepts are required to make vehicle guidance in urban environments possible. An efficient and flexible interface as well as the control structure of Carolinepsilas system is shown that was applied in the DARPA Urban Challenge.