Student-Designed Bots Mimic Self-Driving Cars, Navigate Miniature City & 'Rescue' Animals

Stanford University students programmed robots to autonomously navigate an unknown city-scape and aid in a simulated rescue of animals in danger, in a robotics class that mimics the programming needed for autonomous cars or robots of the future. The small robots were outfitted with laser sensors to help them locate and record obstacles, cameras to enable detection of pictures of animals, and an on-board computer. The student teams programmed their robots to work at varying levels of autonomy, using industry-standard software and image classification developed through deep learning algorithms.