DARPA and the big oops

[Andrew Rudolph]

Check out This Article at mobilerobotics.org it seems that darpa can only run 20 robots for thier challenge, and there have been over 100 papers submitted to be entries.

[Kevin A]

Just yesterday De Anza was accepted. Right now we have a remote control car as many of you know, and we are currently working on nurual nets and video recognition. In December DARPA is going to come by our school and tell us if we will be one of the 20. We have a good chance, seeing as all the safeties and redundencies we have built in, and we are just as deserving as anyone else.

Wish us luck,
Kevin

[Kevin Watson]

Yep, it's true. We (Team Caltech) got the official letter yesterday. We contacted the DARPA folks who said the site visits are meant to weed out the applicants who, for example, have no sponsors, no money, no technical advisors, or have made insignificant progress. Limiting the number of entries to teams deemed to be competitive makes some sense for several reasons, like minimizing the number of chase vehicles that DARPA has to provide.

-Kevin