Ok, for some reason, a lot of people are sleeping on the DARPA Grand Challenge this year. 35 teams are trying to qualify right now for 20 spots. The teams who qualify, to be announced this Thursday, Nov. 1st, will get to compete on Nov. 3rd in the Challenge. This year, it's an Urban Challenge. What does that mean? Well first, some history:
The first Grand Challenge was in 2004. The challenge was to have a vehicle autonomously navigate itself through a 142-mile desert course in Nevada. Team Red from Carnegie Mellon, headed by Red Whittaker, made it furthest at 7.4 miles. Since the first prize was $1 million, and no team completed the course, the prize money rolled over to the next Challenge in 2005.
In 2005, the course was 132 miles, Team Red had 2 entries and came in 2nd and 3rd behind Stanford Racing, who completed the course in 6 hours and 53 minutes. What's even more spectacular is Team Red was in the lead, and Stanford's vehicle had to pass them to come in first. Stanford's team was led by Sebastian Thrun.
This year, they're at an abandoned Military Base in Victorville CA. The Challenge includes:
Vehicles will attempt to make safe left turns across moving traffic, and pull out at T-intersections with cars arriving from both directions. In other tests, vehicles will follow narrow winding roads, avoiding parked cars and other obstructions. Vehicles must also maneuver into a designated parking spot, and negotiate 4-way intersections and road-blocks.
So this is out of hand. They have professional drivers out there simulating traffic and the vehicles have to autonomously merge and navigate the obstacles to reach the goal line. First prize is 2 million dollars and you can watch the race on a live webcast Nov. 3rd at www.grandchallenge.org . Right now there are all sorts of info on the teams, links to blogs, pictures, etc. on the main site. Epic!
It was just a dream, I used to read DARPA magazine,
Marvin Minsky , John McCarthy in the limousine!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment