Kat-5 (vehicle)

Kat-5 is an autonomous vehicle created by Team Gray, an organization comprising employees from The Gray Insurance Company and students from Tulane University's School of Engineering, for the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge.

The vehicle

Kat-5 is a 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid modified with the sensors and actuators needed for autonomous operation. It has an INS/GPS (Inertial Navigation System/Global Positioning System) from Oxford Technical Solutions and LIDAR units from SICK and Riegl. Kat-5 finished the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and placed fourth with a time of 7 hours, 30 minutes, only 37 minutes behind Stanley, the winner of the competition. Kat-5 is powered by almost 100% pure Java and runs both the Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.

Kat-5 uses oscillating LIDARs and information from the INS/GPS unit to create a picture of the surrounding environment. This information is then used to build a path for the vehicle to follow. Kat-5's primary electrical system, used to run the computers and drive-by-wire system, is powered by the standard electrical system of the vehicle while the 24-volt system, used to power the LIDAR sensors, is powered by six solar panels on the roof platform of the vehicle.

Vehicle

A vehicle (from Latin: vehiculum) is a mobile machine that transports people or cargo. Most often, vehicles are manufactured, such as wagons, bicycles, motor vehicles (motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses), railed vehicles (trains, trams), watercraft (ships, boats), aircraft and spacecraft.

Land vehicles are classified broadly by what is used to apply steering and drive forces against the ground: wheeled, tracked, railed or skied. ISO 3833-1977 is the standard, also internationally used in legislation, for road vehicles types, terms and definitions.

History of vehicles

Vehicle (disambiguation)

A vehicle is a mechanical means of conveyance, a carriage or transport.

Vehicle may also refer to:

See also

Vehicle (song)

"Vehicle" is the one-hit wonder success for the Chicago-based band The Ides of March. It rose to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the week of May 23, 1970. It is purported to be the fastest selling single in Warner Bros. Records history.

Written and sung by Jim Peterik, the song features a distinctive horn section riff that is still popular today. The song is often mistaken for the horn driven sound of Blood, Sweat and Tears which was popular in the same time range. Peterik wrote "Vehicle" as a joke.

Fourteen seconds of the completed "Vehicle" master tape (primarily the guitar solo) was accidentally erased in the recording studio. The missing section was spliced in from a previously discarded take.

The song was used in a 2014 commercial for Hardee's restaurants.

Covers