DARPA Grand Challenge

I sure would like to be around there to have a look see.

You're right about the real world vs. the synthetic... but with 23 strong contenders, it sure looks like this time SOMEONE will make it to the finish line.

I see where the one and only Canuck team (Autonosys) failed to qualify.

of like my home team for me eh! :-)ooo

I also would like to see this sort of thing happen on a regular basis. A little competition spurs innovation... Or whatever.

BTW, what blogs are you following?

DOC

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL!"

The main news site, which will have live updates on race progress tomorrow starting at 6AM PST:

(Flash required.)

Ian

DOC wrote:

While I love the Grand Challenge, the main news site is nearly unusable. It uses flash for everything and is not rendered well on my main system, an old, wimpy, slow, low resolution, low color machine.

There may be a text version of the site, which they'd need to comply with assorted accessibility rules, but I can't see enough of the site to find it.

Such a cool idea, such a lousey website.

I have the same access problems as I live in the boonies and can only get dial up.

I also thought that there might be some non sanctioned blogs that took a more critical approach to the competition.

Any bookies calling the odds? :-)ooo

DOC

Some invective here!

DOC

Looks like we got a race this year! As of 9:24 AM CST, here are the standings thus far:

Red Team Too Distance travelled so far: 27 miles Time on track: 1 hr 1 min

Standford Racing Team Distance travelled so far: 24 miles Time on track: 58 min

Red Team Distance travelled so far: 23 miles Time on track: 59 min

Axiom Racing Distance travelled so far: 19 miles Time on track: 41 min

Intelligent Vehicle Safety Tech Distance travelled so far: 19 miles Time on track: 37 min

Team DAD Distance travelled so far: 17 miles Time > Some invective here!

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news:1128781758.506190.73040 @z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

So far, 4 vehicles have completed the course, with only one still on the course, the big old honking truck Terra Max. They pause that one overnight and will allow it to continue at daylight.

Joe

Official times for the four finishers were announced at noon today. Stanford wins the $2 million prize!

6:53:58 (avg 19.1 mph) - Stanford 7:04:50 (avg 18.6 mph) - Red Team Too (Carnegie Mellon) 7:14:00 (avg 18.2 mph) - Red Team 7:30:16 (avg 17.5 mph) - Gray Team (funded by an insurance company!)

Oshkosh's TerraMax is through the Beer Bottle Pass, and is expected to finish within the hour, although with an adjusted time beyond the ten hour race limit. None of the other finalists completed the course.

Thanks for the info - I've been looking for it in the news and on the Grand Challenge site

TerraMax finally finished - still wondering its time.

Did anyone notice around noon PST yesterday all the standings were revised to reflect fewer miles?

12 hours, 51 minutes.

From their blog:

Mile 5: Excitement quickly became frustration as our vehicle was enveloped by high winds and debilitating dust - wind and dust that didn't exist for the first competitors that left the starting gate hours earlier.

.....

Mile 65: Dissapointment began to set in as TerraMax appears to be developing a problem, speed has decreased dramatically and navigation has become tentative. We won't understand the problem until we see it at the finish line.

.....

We look forward to tomorrow with pessimistic optimism.

Ben wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Too bad they gotta blame the "wind and dust that

video of TerraMax during the trials at the speedway, it took a long time to get through one gate, backing up a several times before finallly "deciding" to go through. Seems as thouggh maybe it was over engineered. But hey, what do I know, I can't even spell DARPA. And they did finish the course. If anything, they were given specail consideration and allowed to resume the second day.

Joe

These competitions seem like a far better investment of tax dollars than the traditional method of doling out funds to researchers based on proposals.

I have been involved in several projects funded by grants, including one multi-million $ NSF grant. There was a big celebration when we got the grant, but after that, there was little urgency in actually doing anything. Much of the money was spent on administration and bureaucracy. The only results were a few papers printed in some obscure journal that is now gathering dust on a library shelf. I wonder how different it would have been if we only got the money after getting concrete results, and we knew there were other highly motivated teams trying to get there first.

The Ansari X Prize is another good example of competition vs central planning (even though it was privately funded).

-bob

I don't think they're blaming that for not winning. The second excerpt points out that they had some sort of other problem.

Red Team Too also suffered some unknown technical glitch which put them out of first place.

All sorts of things happened. Cajunbot's servo motor burned out while it was "paused" waiting for congestion to clear.

Those are the breaks.

Yeah - I got bored watching it, so I didn't see how many times they had to back up.

Yeah - not really special consideration - it was clear they didn't come in under the 10 hour time limit.

Given that they were still running and 18 others had dropped out, I think it was good that they let them finish even after 10 hours had elapsed.

"Ben" wrote

I was there and it was really windy, but that was true for everybody. Terramax left the gate a few hours after the first team. They had to be paused for at least 15 minutes because they were removing Alice (caltech if I'm not mistaken) from the road (quite an entertaining crash, very close to all us). The first teams could also blame light conditions as the sun was not giving full light at dusk.

I don't know if at that point it was already "glitchy", but it took forever for terramax to cross the railroad bridge close Buffalo Bill. It was stop and go for at least 10 minutes.

Real pitty was team ENSCO... they got a flat tire at about 60 and something miles... they were looking very good.

Not trying to take the shine off the winners, but I found that this year it was much easier than last year. Less miles and the only challenging part was beer bottle pass, on the last 7 miles of competition. All that said, teams really improved from last year, as there was no spectacles on the starting chute. Even the last team did close to 7 miles. (I think only one team failed to start)

Overall, it was very fun to be there. Kudos for grayteam team that finished very close to the big dogs.

Cheers

Padu

Did DARPA say they were going to hold another event for next year?

thanks

"Padu" wrote in news:XYidnVYMvp snipped-for-privacy@iswest.net:

Padu,

I'll bet you're glad you went!

Could you describe the crash and any other interesting things you saw?

Joe

"Bob" wrote in news:1128929609.071096.102800 @z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

I couldn't agree with you more, it often seems that big governments main objective is to spend as much as possible on as little as possible. Keeps the economy going.

It's great to have some concrete results, it's even nicer to see a competition where anyone can be involved.

Joe

The director of DARPA, Dr. Tony Tether, has announced that there will NOT be another Grand Challenge next year. At least not one for autonomous ground vehicles.

It's over. Now to commercialize the technology.

John Nagle Team Overbot.