Caroline: An autonomously driving vehicle for urban environments

Abstract The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge afforded the golden opportunity for the Technische Universität Braunschweig to demonstrate its abilities to develop an autonomously driving vehicle to compete with the world's best. After several stages of qualification, our team CarOLO qualified early for the DARPA Urban Challenge Final Event and was among only 11 teams from initially 89 competitors to compete in the final. We had the ability to work together in a large group of experts, each contributing his expertise in his discipline, and significant organizational, financial, and technical support by local sponsors, who helped us to become the best non‐U.S. team. In this report, we describe the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, our contribution, “Caroline,” the technology, and algorithms, along with her performance in the DARPA Urban Challenge Final Event on November 3, 2007. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.