Robots, start your engines. Darpa Grand Challenge event this weekend.

[GIGObuster]

http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.html
http://www.grandchallenge.org/

http://www.newsobserver.com/24hour/technology/story/2782494p-11398894c.html

Last year, only half of the 15 autonomous robotic vehicles that ran in the so-called Grand Challenge passed the semifinals. No team claimed the $1 million inaugural prize because all the contestants broke down within a few miles of the starting gate.

So this year, the sponsor, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, doubled the purse with the hope that a vehicle would finish Saturday’s $2 million race.

This year’s finalists completed the hilly qualifying course littered with hay bales and parked cars at least once. Five of the vehicles finished it four consecutive times. Those included H1ghlander; a converted Humvee Sandstorm; a modified Volkswagen Touareg by Stanford University; a six-wheel truck; and a Jeep Grand Cherokee.

“I’m inspired by all the robots,” said William “Red” Whittaker, a Carnegie Mellon robotics professor. “Never discount or diminish any of them.”

The race is part of the Pentagon’s effort to fulfill a congressional mandate to have a third of all military ground vehicles unmanned by 2015. The Defense Department envisions using robotic vehicles to bring supplies in combat zones.

DARPA, the Pentagon’s research and development arm, spent $9 million on this year’s event. The agency would award the prize to the first team whose computer-driven vehicle can traverse a rough and winding desert course of up to 175 miles in less than 10 hours.

http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/media.html

The finalists, in alphabetical order, are:

Axion Racing (Westlake Village, Calif.),
Team Cajunbot (Lafayette, La.),
Team CalTech (Pasadena, Calif.),
CIMAR (Gainesville, Fla.),
Team Cornell (Ithaca, N.Y.),
Team DAD (Morgan Hill, Calif.),
Desert Buckeyes (Ohio State University, Columbus),
Team ENSCO (Springfield, Va.),
The Golem Group/UCLA (Los Angeles),
The Gray Team (Metairie, La.),
Insight Ra cing (Cary, N.C.),
Intelligent Vehicle Safety Systems I (Littleton, Colo.),
Mitre Meteorites (McLean, Va.),
MonsterMoto (Cedar Park, Tex.),
Mojavaton (Grand Junction, Colo.),
Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.),
Red Team (Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh),
Red Team Too (Carnegie-Mellon),
SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering, (Thousand Oaks, Calif.),
Stanford Racing Team (Palo Alto, Calif.),
Team Terra Max (Oshkosh, Wis.), Virginia Tech Team Rocky (Blacksburg, Va.), Virginia Tech Grand Challenge Team.

[GIGObuster]

Darned Submit Reply button…

Anyhow, I am interested in this race. Who do you think will finish or will be first?

[TonyF]

I was thinking about joining UCDavis’ team for this last year, actually, but it turned out our team got disqualified during the prelims or something. I’ll be graduated before the next challenge rolls around.

Personally, I’d be surprised if anything finished the race. There were some pretty big players and some pretty fancy stuff last year, yet nothing performed at 100%. Seeing the videos from last year, it’s obvious it’s not as simple as one would think. (Kudos to the few people last who not only made the attempt, but tried to do it with motorcycles. Now that’s optimism; those things aren’t exactly stable on their own.)

[GIGObuster]

@TonyF

I was thinking about joining UCDavis’ team for this last year, actually, but it turned out our team got disqualified during the prelims or something. I’ll be graduated before the next challenge rolls around.

Personally, I’d be surprised if anything finished the race. There were some pretty big players and some pretty fancy stuff last year, yet nothing performed at 100%. Seeing the videos from last year, it’s obvious it’s not as simple as one would think. (Kudos to the few people last who not only made the attempt, but tried to do it with motorcycles. Now that’s optimism; those things aren’t exactly stable on their own.)

The Blue Team, (Ghost rider) from Berkeley and Texas A&M were the guys with the motorcycle this time, but it seems that they did not qualify for the finals.

[GIGObuster]

http://www.grandchallenge.org/

This time all finalists managed to leave the starting line! Already more than half are finished or damaged. The Stanford team is on the lead.

[AndrewL]

The Stanford team has completed the race, and it is highly unlikely at this point that any of the other competitors will beat Stanley’s time.

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

The British government have cottonned onto the act and are starting their own version this year, open to students, with a prize of £10,000. It’s slightly different, though, the vehicles being developed are autonomous submarines, not land vehicles.

http://news.mod.uk/news_headline_story2.asp?newsItem_id=3539

[GIGObuster]

Took a while, (one robot was still running until today) but it is finally official:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051010/ap_on_hi_te/robot_race;_ylt=Ag7OC9PNUXitIKWigfn83lms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-

Stanford Volkswagen Wins $2M Robot Race

Stanley the VW Touareg, designed by Stanford University, zipped through the 132-mile Mojave Desert course in six hours and 53 minutes Saturday, using only its computer brain and sensors to navigate rough and twisting desert and mountain trails. The Stanford team celebrated by popping champagne and pouring it over the mud-covered Stanley.

“This car, to me, is really a piece of history,” Stanford computer scientist Sebastian Thrun said after receiving an oversized check for the $2 million prize, funded by taxpayers. He said he did not know how he would spend the money, but joked that he needed to buy cat food.

Stanford spent $500,000 on the race, some of which was provided by sponsors.

Looking at the sponsors, I have to say that it is a coup for Volkswagen, Intel and …

… Red Bull gives you wheels! :smack:

[N9IWP]

And the golden broom award to team TerraMax.
At least they finished, unlike most teams.

Brian