VisLab Milestones

This page contains the most important achievements of VisLab of the past 15 years. The vision laboratory was created in 1990; in the early years (1990-1994) we started our research on a Connection Machine (the second in Europe) and we developed our own SIMD processor (256 processing elements) to support real time image processing on board of a vehicle.

The rest is history...

In 1994 we participated in the final meeting of the PROMETHEUS Project (the first and largest European Project devoted to increasing road safety) with a vehicle (MobLab, Mobile Laboratory) jointly developed by many Italian research centers. We demonstrated real-time lane detection with a special-purpose computer architecture (SIMD, with 256 single-bit processors).

In 1998 we demonstrated and tested our own automatic vehicle (the ARGO vehicle) through a 2000+ km trip on Italian highways. During this test, which lasted one week, ARGO drove itself for 94% of the whole route using two mini b/w cameras and a Pentium 200MHz (devoted to image acquisition, processing, trajectory planning, driving actuators, and data recording). Not bad for being 1998! Part of the code was written in Assembly language to optimize performance. This was one of the first experiments worldwide, which launched our Laboratory as one of the most advanced in the world.

In 2000 we were responsible for the organization of the scientific part of the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium 2000 in Detroit, Michigan. Prof. Alberto Broggi was the Program Chair.

In 2001 we participated in the Italian Scientific missions to Antarctica (South Pole) and contributed with an automatic snowcat, able to perceive the environment thanks to a pair of stereo cameras. We gave the snowcat the capability to locate the track left by previous vehicles on ice, so that we could implement a platoon of vehicles.

From Jan 2004 to Dec 2009, Prof. Alberto Broggi is the Editor-in-Chief of the most important IEEE journal on Intelligent Transportation Systems dealing also with all aspects of Intelligent Vehicles: the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

In 2004 we participated to the first DARPA Grand Challenge, but our vision system was not used during the race due to insufficient time to integrate it into the TerraMax vehicle.

In 2004 VisLab organized the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium 2004 in Parma, Italy. The whole lab was involved in the organization. Prof. Alberto Broggi was the General Chair.

In 2005 we participated again in the DARPA Grand Challenge. We designed the vision system for the TerraMax vehicle, which reached the finish line. We designed the obstacle detector and the path detector, and a fusion algorithm with a laserscanner. Our obstacle detection algorithm was reliable enough that gave an average of one (1!) false detection per hour of off-road driving. Everyone was pretty impressed. TerraMax was the only vehicle that reached the finish line using vision as primary sensor.

In December 2005, VisLab (part of Team TerraMax) was invited at the Pentagon (Washington, USA) to present the vehicle and its capabilities. The interviews were given by the official team spokesman Gary Schmiedel (Oshkosh Truck Corp.) to the large audience composed of high level military and civil attendees. The delegation was composed of representatives of VisLab, Oshkosh Truck Corp, and Rockwell Collins.

In January 2006 after only 75 days of work, Team TerraMax successfully fielded a new autonomous vehicle: an Oshkosh PLS, on which all the technology developed for TerraMax in the DARPA Grand Challenge was ported and tuned. The vehicle was demonstrated in Yuma, Arizona, and was able to successfully run missions in complete autonomy.

In November 2007 TerraMax is qualified for the Darpa Urban Challenge: TerraMax is one of the 11 vehicles to pass the qualifications and attend the DARPA Urban Challenge; TerraMax perceives the 3D world thanks to 11 cameras, providing all-round vision in urban environment.

In 2008 VisLab becomes a spin-off company. After 18 years of world-wide renowned activities, the research team decides to mark its presence in the industrial market: the VisLab spin-off company focuses on enhancing automotive safety.

In 2008 VisLab finished the preparation of the new BRAiVE vehicle. BRAiVE (a short for BRAin-drIVE) is an innovative intelligent vehicle with a terrific sensor suite (10 cameras, 4 laserscanners, laser beams, GPS and IMU); the 4 onboard PCs allow it to drive autonomously. BRAiVE was presented officially at the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium IV`09.

In 2008 Prof. Broggi received a grant from the European Research Council, as one of the best European researchers and will receive a grant of about 1.8 million Euro to continue and strengthen his researches in the field of enhancing road safety by means of innovative driving assistance systems and automatic driving.