In another episode of "it seems crazy, but we love it," we discover that the folks at MIT have an advanced autonomy class called Duckietown. This small town serves as a development platform for a group of fifty robots with rubber ducks that drive through its streets using only a camera, without preloaded maps, and respecting traffic signs. The first versions are based on the Raspberry Pi, and the entire project is open source, so anyone can create something similar.
The progress of autonomous vehicles is slow but steady. While the current bureaucracy tries to reach a position that allows its widespread use, major projects accumulate millions of hours on the road, demonstrating what we all already know deep down: computers drive much better than humans. In fact, it is precisely the "human factor" that is causing problems with the "Autopilot" function in Tesla cars. The system is not perfect, however, the biped it carries can be much worse when it wants to be. In other words, projects seeking to remove homo sapiens from the driver's seat are very serious, although there is one so different from the rest that even a child could enjoy it:
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Duckietown. This is not a weekend whim or an isolated experiment at a hackathon. It is a real class at MIT, focused on advanced autonomy. Participants have built a total of fifty "Duckiebots," small robotic taxis that transport rubber ducks through the town. The Duckiebots respect traffic signs and lights, stop at intersections, turn correctly, and avoid colliding with each other using just an integrated camera. There are no preloaded maps, and according to the available documentation, the first version of the Duckiebots uses a Raspberry Pi 2 as the main hardware piece.
All elements of the class, from software to robot design, have been published as open source, so anyone can reproduce Duckietown on a modest budget. Needless to say, Duckietown is an excellent option to introduce robotics and autonomy developments to the little ones at home (though something tells me the class would get out of control in record time).
