Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

There was a story on CNN headline news about a week ago about University of Louisiana - Lafayette's entry.

My full support goes out to all of the participants (especially PV high, gonna have to root for the young guns).

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

There are all sorts of good news stories that I have seen about this. Those vehicles are so cool. They are sort of going to act like the rovers on Mars when the engineers tell them to go somewhere and take it's on path to get there. I would love a webcast or other live footage, even if it is after the event.


I found pics on their site here

I would also like to root for the young gun high schoolers and their Acura MDX named "Doom Buggy". I do believe that they won't win the competition, however, that team is just like FIRST teams. The students are all getting great hands-on knowledge and having fun in a competition. They are getting the inspiration that will hopefully lead them into the science and technology fields.

The media coverage of this has said that about 100 teams applied, but DARPA chose only 25 to compete, because they could not handle more than that.

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

Yes, the CMU folks pulled it together over the last three days and were completely operational (Their workarea is next to ours so we got to watch 'em work). CMU, on their first QID run, ran perfectly. We (Team Caltech) also ran a perfect QID run today. Friday afternoon we'll move Bob to Barstow before the race on Saturday.

-Kevin

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

Do you know the particular route yet and where it takes you, and what kind of terrain there is on the route???I'm guessing it's not just all flat terrain!

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

No, we won't know until 4:00AM Saturday morning. Col. Negron (the head DARPA guy) said that the course will be very tough in last nights team meeting. I don't think anyone will complete the race this year because this is a really, really tough problem.

-Kevin

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

One of the side benefits of having the California Speedway all to yourself:



That's my '94 Ford Taurus SHO in the pits. To get to the practice area, you have to drive to the other side of the speedway on the track. Needless to say, I've been spending a lot of time driving to/from the practice area :D.

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

Yeah, it bothers me, but it's still extremely unique, interesting and educational and nobody says that the teams have to turn around and hire out to the DoD when this is over.... do they?

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

Kevin- How is the Ohio State Terramax team doing? Did they pass inspection and run the demo course yet? I couldn't find a status page to check for myself, although there is a nice status page for Saturday's run that I plan on checkig frequently on Saturday. http://www.grandchallenge.org Good luck by the way!! -Joe

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

No, you don't have to give 'em anything. The only thing they get is the technical paper and whatever data they can collect with their "e-stop" box and it's built-in GPS receiver.

-Kevin

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

I'm not sure if they ran the entire QID course. On Tuesday we witnessed the Terramax (TerrorMax?) entry run into the back of a blue minivan the DARPA folks had placed in the middle of the course. DARPA remotly paused the 'bot and then allowed it to resume at which time it continued to push the minivan one and a half car lengths before it was disabled again. It was great fun to watch. Later that night, at the team meeting, one of the DARPA guys joked that the resale value of the blue van had diminished markedly during the day. To make the event more interesting, I hope they get to run in the race (I just hope they start ahead of us :D ).

-Kevin

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

Meh. Most of the United States robotics programs are funded by Darpa. In fact they fund a lot of things that if you really try to think about have no use in defense. Also Darpa funds the W3C.

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

Grand Challenge 1, Competitors 0 [Slashdot]

Sorry to hear about that :(

When is take two?

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

The next event is scheduled for 2006. Since no one won the prize money also rolls over to the next event.

Here's a link http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...5628_2004mar13

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

2006 wow..

Well at least all the teams now have a good idea of what the competition entails, and now they defiently have a boat load of time to work on there vehicles.

-Aaron

Re: DARPA Grand Challenge Photos
 

I would like to say congratulations to all the competitors for attempting this enormous challenge, and may your reasearch continue. All of the vehicles entered are amazing engineering feats, but one of my favorites is the Blue Team's motorcycle. Just to stabilize a motorcycle autonomously over flat ground would be difficult.

Hopefully some of these teams fix their problems and do some more testing so we can see someone get at least half way next time!