Phenomenal!
Spoiler Alert! (just kidding, but you know how people reveal the details of Heroes or Lost, well I'm about to do it with the DARPA Urban Challenge.)
Ok, I haven't gotten anything done all day because I've been watching the race online. 6 of 11 teams completed the course. Stanford crossed the finish first, but we won't know the actual winner until later. Along with the course completion times, the vehicles were awarded and deducted points based on their performance throughout several key tests. DARPA's crunchin the numbers and will probably announce the winner tomorrow morning.
Oh, how far it's come! I remember watching the "webcast" in 2005. Then it consisted of a map with different colored moving dots representing the bots. I was so excited when I saw the red dot of Stanford pass the CMU dot. The reporting was so sparse, I had to wait for official DARPA updates to confirm that they'd actually completed the course before CMU.
Today's webcast was brilliant. They had cameras everywhere and you could watch all the vehicles in action. Like a tv sports event, they even had the banner at the bottom of the screen. On the right of the banner, instead of espn, it had the DARPA emblem. And on the left, it would have numbers for the mission completed while the banner displayed the team name. They even had announcers calling the action. It was spectacular! I hope they release it on DVD, I'd buy it. It was amazing to see autonomous vehicles come to a Stop sign together, pause, then take action to merge into traffic, or continue on their way without hitting the other vehicles. There were some mishaps of course, but all in all, it was amazing! Congratulations to all the teams! I can't wait to find out who won.
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