DARPA Grand Challenge Photos

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by andy

THAT IS SOOOO AWESOME!!!
Do you know if the CMU team is better after they rolled last week? It didn't look good...

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

[Elgin Clock]

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!

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

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!

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

[Kevin Watson]

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 .

[DanL]

Originally Posted by Kevin Watson

...I don't think anyone will complete the race this year because this is a really, really tough problem.

-Kevin

Grand Challenge 1, Competitors 0 [Slashdot]

Sorry to hear about that

When is take two?

[Jay H 237]

Originally Posted by SuperDanman

Grand Challenge 1, Competitors 0 [Slashdot]

Sorry to hear about that

When is take two?

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

[Aaron Lussier]

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

[tkwetzel]

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!

[andy]

First off, congratulations to all teams that participated! You have had to overcome some very pressing problems and hopefully have learned volumes from your experiences.

However, I see a particular silver lining to this thundercloud. Many of us (high school students- juniors and up) will be able to participate in this competition next time!

I think that is AWESOME!!!

Much of the technologies that were developed as a result of the FIRST competition by our team (and I'm sure by others) could easily be put to practical use by entrants into the DARPA Grand Challenge.

This has been a wonderful publicity stunt for robotics. Hopefully this inspires many aspiring roboticists to continue their interests into the professional field.

Either way, CONGRATULATIONS!

Your bot at least MOVES in autonomous mode!

This is so cool!

-Andy

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by Jay H 237

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

It was just announced at the DGC reception, here in Primm NV, that the race would be run again in one year and the pot o' money would be increased to two million dollars. Team Caltech starts working on their new-and-improved 'bot on Monday .

-Kevin

[ThetaDot]

I don't understand what the : / faces at DARPA are for
What's your beef with them?

[joe_balint]

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

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by joe_balint

Kevin- How is the Ohio State Terramax team doing? Did they pass inspection and run the demo course yet?

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 ).

-Kevin

[Adam Y.]

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?

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.