“Parkour Cars” – real-time autonomous vehicular acrobatics

Nima Keivan’s research project is incredible. It involves an autonomous toy car that navigates through an array of obstacles, including loops and enormous jumps. It uses an open-source physics engine (Bullet) to project forward in time the result of taking multiple actions and uses the results to make the optimal move (e.g. what will happen if I turn left .5 degrees, or stay straight, or turn right by .5 degrees).

Learn more on the project page or check out the PDF for more details. Thanks to Jack Morrison of Replica Labs for the link.