Talk about driving ducks in mini taxis, and the whole idea may seem crazy to some. But for the science students at MIT, it's a whole new level of driving science.
Dubbed Duckietown, research students from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (Csail) have created a small town with about fifty PUVs steered by little rubber ducks, the DailyMail reported. These self-driving cars with duck drivers are equipped with cameras which allow them to navigate the small town, interpret traffic signs, and avoid mini obstacle crashes.
The concept is pretty much interesting because compared to the Google self-driving car experiment, these duck taxis make their way around town without the use of pre-programmed maps. Each duck-mobile has a built-in computer which is guided by a programmed vision algorithm; allowing it to interpret QR codes, when to stop, as well as read road signs. Csail students were tasked to come up with appropriate computer language for the taxis to work accordingly, as per the news agency.
The instructors behind the self-driving duck taxi program said that the students were encouraged to participate in the challenge with a lot of engineering decisions, TechCrunch reported. "We believe a tool like this will help create a common platform and language for researchers to build on," according to Liam Paull, co-instructor to lead research scientist Andrea Censi for the Csail course. He remains optimistic that the said program would give an innovative idea for future computer scientists to collaborate in bringing self-driving vehicles a step further.
The project may be relatively expensive, however, it allows students to learn about detecting and tracking objects via the duck-mobiles. In a visual look into Duckietown, viewers can easily tell that the duck taxis are aware of the other drivers. Few cars are seen viewing road signs or giving way to other duck drivers, as per the publication.
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