A computer that knows how to slide-park a car

A few years ago, we interviewed the Carnegie Mellon University team that eventually won the Darpa challenge. The challenge was to devise a vehicle that could pilot itself without any aid from humans through an obstacle course with features it didn't know about ahead of time.

The team that came in second was from Stanford University. They have been tinkering with their car since the Challenge ended and have gotten it to the point where it can slide-park itself, stunt-man style, between two parked cars. There is a video of this maneuver on the Physorg.com site that is something to see:

http://www.physorg.com/news192784548.html

Our original video interview with the CMU team is here:

http://machinedesign.com/video/cmu-darpa-challenge-winner-1114