Mission

Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering (PAVE) is an undergraduate student-led research group at Princeton University dedicated to advancing and promoting the field of robotics through competitive challenges, self-guided research and community outreach while providing extracurricular learning and leadership opportunities to student members.

History

PAVE has its origins in the Spring of 2004. A group of students in Professor Alain Kornhauser’s Transportation class watched the unfolding of the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge, in which no team traveled more than 7.5 miles on the 150+ mile course, and decided that they could put together a DARPA Grand Challenge team at Princeton that could be competitive.

The Princeton team successfully competed in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge with Prospect Eleven, passing numerous qualification steps and seeding 10th out of 23 finalists.

Following the 2005 Challenge, the team continued to improve the hardware and software systems on Prospect Eleven.

In the Spring of 2006, the DARPA Urban Challenge was announced, to take place in October, 2007.

The PAVE website was launched in July, 2006.

Through the generosity of Ford Motor Company, PAVE acquired a vehicle, named Prospect Twelve, for the Urban Challenge in February, 2007

PAVE again passed several qualification procedures and was among 35 teams at the semifinals of the Urban Challenge.

After the Urban Challenge, DARPA announced no plans for further competitions. Instead, PAVE elected to compete in the 2008 Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC), held in May, 2008.

At the 2008 IGVC, PAVE won 1st place for our technical paper (PDF) and design presentation, 4th place in a waypoint-following challenge and 6th place in the lane-following challenge. Overall, PAVE finished 3rd out of 47 teams and won rookie-of-the-year.

PAVE returned to the IGVC in 2009 with Argos, an entirely new, redesigned robot. The team won first place in the navigation (waypoint-following) challenge.

For the 2010 IGVC, the team once again built Phobetor, a new robot based on the design of Argos. The team was awarded 2nd place in the design challenge and won acclaim for its robot design and technical paper.

2010 is also the year that PAVE began working on the ARM (Autonomous Robotic Manipulator).

PAVE continues to work on Prospect 12 and Phobetor, focusing on refining and improving the systems developed for the Urban Challenge and IGVC. Our goal is to have Prospect Twelve successfully pass the NJ State drivers’ exam, thereby becoming the first car to obtain its own drivers license.  We are currently in the midst of a fundamental redesign of Prospect 12, so this should be an exciting year.