Alice Goes Four Wheelin' (Autonomously)

[mechanicalbrain]

Originally Posted by dlavery

By yesterday morning the Stanford team came through and "Stanley" bettered H1ghlander's time through the course by about 4 seconds. They held the lead for most of the day.
-dave

Actually Stanford uses a really cool programming ideas. Their robot takes data and then figures out the probability that that data isn't false. apparently they reran last years coarse and made it most of the way (they had to stop because the human driven car got a flat.).

[Kevin Watson]

These are the twenty-three teams going to the DGC festivities this weekend:

Axion Racing (Westlake Village, CA)
Team Cajunbot (Lafayette, LA)
Team Caltech (Pasadena, CA)
CIMAR (Gainesville, FL)
Team Cornell (Ithaca, NY)
Team DAD (Morgan Hill, CA)
Desert Buckeyes (Ohio State University, Columbus, OH)
Team ENSCO (Springfield, VA)
The Golem Group/UCLA (Los Angeles, CA)
The Gray Team (Metairie, LA)
Insight Racing (Cary, NC)
Intelligent Vehicle Safety Systems I (Littleton, CO)
Mitre Meteorites (McLean, VA)
MonsterMoto (Cedar Park, TX)
Mojavaton (Grand Junction, CO),
Princeton University (Princeton, NJ)
Red Team (Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA)
Red Team Too (Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA)
SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering (Thousand Oaks, CA)
Stanford Racing Team (Palo Alto, CA)
Team Terra Max (Oshkosh, WI)
Virginia Tech Team Rocky (Blacksburg, VA)
Virginia Tech Grand Challenge Team (Blacksburg, VA)

-Kevin

Edit: Here's the official press release.

[phrontist]

Originally Posted by Kevin Watson

These are the twenty-three teams going to the DGC festivities this weekend:

Axion Racing (Westlake Village, CA)
Team Cajunbot (Lafayette, LA)
Team Caltech (Pasadena, CA)
CIMAR (Gainesville, FL)
Team Cornell (Ithaca, NY)
Team DAD (Morgan Hill, CA)
Desert Buckeyes (Ohio State University, Columbus, OH)
Team ENSCO (Springfield, VA)
The Golem Group/UCLA (Los Angeles, CA)
The Gray Team (Metairie, LA)
Insight Racing (Cary, NC)
Intelligent Vehicle Safety Systems I (Littleton, CO)
Mitre Meteorites (McLean, VA)
MonsterMoto (Cedar Park, TX)
Mojavaton (Grand Junction, CO),
Princeton University (Princeton, NJ)
Red Team (Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA)
Red Team Too (Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA)
SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering (Thousand Oaks, CA)
Stanford Racing Team (Palo Alto, CA)
Team Terra Max (Oshkosh, WI)
Virginia Tech Team Rocky (Blacksburg, VA)
Virginia Tech Grand Challenge Team (Blacksburg, VA)

-Kevin

Woah, VT qualified TWO teams. That's impressive.

[mechanicalbrain]

here's a recent article on GC including the pictures! http://www.robots.net/article/1662.html enjoy!

[Taylor_Ratliff]

Alice is looking good, im rooting for Team CalTech!

[Crazy]

I had the chance to look around in Alice last year when I visited my cousin (Joe, he's a sophmore and one of the programmers) and I have to say it was ridiculously cool. My favorite part was the dynamic pneumatic braking system, using something like four or five pneumatics of increasing strength for differnent ammounts of pressure.

I talked to Joe on Saturday, he said Alice only made it eight miles before running into a concrete wall. He said there wasn't that much damage, just to the power steering. He said that the one of the LADAR's was miscalibrated or got disconnected or something, and since their code requires both to be active, they lost both. After that, I guess they lost their GPS signal underneath some powerlines and when they got their signal back, they were angeled differently then they thought. Hopefully thats something close to what happend, maybe Kevin can clarify.

PS: Hey Kevin, if you know Joe, tell him I said hi

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by Crazy

Hopefully thats something close to what happend, maybe Kevin can clarify.

I'll know more later today.

Originally Posted by Crazy

PS: Hey Kevin, if you know Joe, tell him I said hi

I'm sure Joe (Donovan, right?) is still sleeping after months of writing code 24/7 <grin>.

-Kevin

[jimfortytwo]

A bunch of us trekked out from Caltech to see the show as spectators. I thought it was a really incredible experience, and definitely worth the drive. It was wonderful to see car after car after car make its way from the starting line off to the horizon. It was even more exciting to watch Alice's dust cloud make its way back toward us for the photo-opp pass near the 8-mile mark. I don't think anyone in the stands would have imagined Alice suddenly turning off road right there in front of us-- it was a tragic thing to watch. The crash story as related above jives with what the speculation was at the time of the incident, but we didn't hang around to get anything in the way of a debriefing from the team after their inspection of the vehicle.

[Kevin Watson]

One of the grad students on Team Caltech assembled a movie using imagery from one of Alice's cameras. Here's the link: http://robotics.caltech.edu/~klk/alice.html. To those that don't know what happened, Alice malfunctioned and easily drove over the top of a K-rail and headed up an embankment towards the press, who scattered muy rapido.

-Kevin

[Kyle Greer]

Yah I saw the crash on Daily Planet, Alice took quiet a beating. Any word if they will be holding the event again next year? But all in all good job to all teams.

[Kevin Watson]

Originally Posted by Kyle Greer

...Alice took quiet a beating.

Actually, Alice was/is just fine and was driven back to Caltech from Primm. Sportsmobile, who did the 4x4 conversion, did a remarkable job of beefing-up the suspension to take such abuse.

Originally Posted by Kyle Greer

Any word if they will be holding the event again next year? But all in all good job to all teams.

No, they won't be doing it again.

-Kevin

[Greg Needel]

Kevin,

i was wondering what kind of resolution of accuracy you had on your steering. i noticed while watching the video Alice seems to move back and forth during in the lane. The team i was on had the same problem and it was due to the variation in the steering column vs the encoder trying to keep it at a specific angle. actually i was really wondering if this was a problem for you or it was intentional (you system was plotting the "best" path)