Boss -- the robotic car that Carnegie Mellon University's Tartan Racing has developed -- cruised a test course like a 16-year-old with a driving permit, avoiding traffic, stopping at stop signs and swinging around cars parked in its lane.

	Bob Donaldson, Post-Gazette Without a driver and chugging along at a restricted 15 mph, Carnegie Mellon University's computer-controlled robot vehicle "Boss" is put through its paces on the CMU test track in Hazelwood for Defense Department representatives yesterday. Click photo for larger image.

Yet it's not fair to compare Boss to a 16-year-old driver. After all, it carefully avoided white and double yellow lines, stopped precisely at stop signs and efficiently turned around at a dead end.

The robot car provided a driving demonstration yesterday for representatives of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the Department of Defense, sponsor of the Urban Challenge competition for robotic cars that will culminate Nov. 3 with a 60-mile race through the streets of a mock city.

"Boss behaved like a good beginning driver," said DARPA's Urban Challenge Program Manager Norm Whitaker. "We can see it is able to drive the road and what it can do at intersections.

"It ran all the tests and did a real good job."

During the three-hour test, DARPA put Boss through four runs on the quarter-mile roadway at the former LTV Steel site along the Monongahela River. Without human assistance, Boss navigated through a busy intersection and passed by parked cars in its own lane, one of which was in its lane immediately after a right turn, among other challenges.

When it completed difficult tasks, more than 100 onlookers applauded and cheered.

DARPA required that the vehicle not exceed 15 mph, stop within a meter of a white line at stop signs and remain several car lengths behind vehicles in its lane, all of which it completed successfully.

DARPA is putting 53 contending vehicles through the qualifying test to reduce the field to 30. Results will be announced Aug. 9, officials said.

In the finals, vehicles must travel 60 city miles within a six-hour time limit and avoid oncoming traffic and other obstacles, merge into moving traffic, negotiate intersections and traffic circles and follow traffic laws. The top three finishers will receive $2 million, $1 million and $500,000.

Boss, one of two 2007 Chevrolet Tahoes that GM donated to Tartan Racing, has undergone up to 50,000 hours of human effort to transform it into a robot that drives itself, said CMU Tartan Racing team leader William "Red" Whittaker.

"There were no mistakes that I can talk about or know about," Dr. Whittaker said afterward. "Today was real solid."

The Urban Challenge will be "a competition of great machines and great ideas," he said. "A lot of what you are seeing today never has been done before."