Only 1 week until the beginning of the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge in VictorVille, CA

[Andrew Rudolph]

I got to work with the cajunbot team some over the last two years deveolping future packaging and design of thier vehicle, it was great fun getting to teach other designers the ins and outs of robots and liasoning btwn the engineering team and the design team. Any updates from people there would be awesome!

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Yeah for the Cat team Victor Tango! Peoria teams were able to get a ride in this vehicle back in June. Very impressive. Good luck Viginia Tech students!

[Adam Shapiro]

I just got back from NQE last night (I will be returning this weekend for the final event). So far it has been an extremely impressive display of talent, hard work, and innovation. Though I can't describe the qualifying tests, I can say that they are very difficult, even for the most advanced teams, and everyone who has attempted the task of completing them has done an amazing job.

The following are a few teams that I have been particularly impressed with so far, both in design and performance. Though I've only listed a few, rest assured that is not nearly the whole list.

Team Lux - Lux's car is very impressive in that it is nearly impossible to tell it is an autonomous vehicle by looking at it, unless you were already aware. They have built all sensors within the confines of the car, and all wiring and computers are hidden under the car's panels.

Team AnnieWAY - This German team has done an incredible job with the very difficult task of negotiating intersections and merging into moving traffic. Watching their run on the course that tested those behaviors was a great experience. They took turns smoothly, handled occluded cars properly, and generally looked like there wasn't an empty driver's seat inside.

Stanford Racing - As expected, Stanford has lived up to their previous performance and put on quite a show. Stanford has worked very closely with VW to produce a really smooth drive-by-wire system and a really cool dynamic AI. Their car drives and navigates beautifully.

Of note:
Team TerraMax - When Oshkosh says they build big trucks, it is in no way an understatement.

Insight Racing - A Lotus driving around the course on its own is a pretty cool thing to see. Seeing it parked next to TerraMax waiting for a practice time is another thing all together!

Axion Racing - They used a PS3 as an image processing system. Enough said.

There are many, many other teams I'd like to mention but the list would go on for quite a while. There are still a few days remaining before the final event, so it's still anyone's guess who will make it to the final event on Saturday. All I can say is that I wish all teams good luck!

PS. Team Cornell is doing very well by the way. As of this morning we've run 4 of 6 test runs, and aside from a few minor code bugs our vehicle, Skynet, has out-performed our expectations. I'm very proud of everyone on the team, and I'm honored to have had the opportunity to work with them. I will be flying back down Friday for the final event, so I'll keep everyone posted.

[JesseK]

Bah, Sting Racing is out of it. Durn those unprocessed stop commands!

[FourPenguins]

I'm going to be at Brunswick Eruption that day. Any chance the good folks at team 25 could put this on a tv/monitor somewhere in case we've got some down time?

[Bongle]

I'm going to be at Brunswick Eruption that day. Any chance the good folks at team 25 could put this on a tv/monitor somewhere in case we've got some down time?

The webcast link should be at http://www.grandchallenge.org/ on Nov 3 if you have a laptop.

Originally Posted by Adam Shapiro

PS. Team Cornell is doing very well by the way. As of this morning we've run 4 of 6 test runs, and aside from a few minor code bugs our vehicle, Skynet, has out-performed our expectations. I'm very proud of everyone on the team, and I'm honored to have had the opportunity to work with them. I will be flying back down Friday for the final event, so I'll keep everyone posted.

I've just read that you guys have qualified (along with Stanford, CMU, and Virginia Tech) for the main event. Congratulations!

General update:
DARPA eliminated 12 teams from the running today, and qualified 4 for the main race. The 12 teams are:
First Group eliminated:
1) George Tech/SAIC Sting Racing,
2) Ody-Era,
3) SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering,
4) Team Berlin,
5) University of Utah and
6) Princeton University.

Second group:
1. Caltech
2. Mojavaton
3. Team Jefferson
4. Team Urbanator
5. Gator Nation
6. Team Juggernaut.

This means there are still 23 teams vying for the 20 remaining spots.

My blog list is now:
http://www.cajunbot.com%2Fblog_xml.php%3Fcat%3D1 - CajunBot
http://www.teamjefferson.com%2F%3Fq%3Dblog%2F4%2Ffeed - Team Jefferson (eliminated)
http://pave.princeton.edu%2Fmain%2Ffeed%2F - Princeton (eliminated)
http://raceinformation.insightracing...%3Ffeed%3Drss2 (Insight Racing)
http://blogs.intel.com%2Fresearch%2Fatom.xml (Stanford) (passed!)
http://stingracing.wordpress.com%2Ffeed%2F (Sting Racing) (eliminated)
http://cudgc.blogspot.com%2Ffeeds%2Fposts%2Fdefault (Cornell) (passed!)
http://teamvictortango.blogspot.com%...ts%2Fdef ault (Virginia Tech) (passed!)
http://www.tartanracing.org/blog/ (CMU) (passed!)
http://www.team-lux.com/ (LUX) (eliminated)
http://gc.caltech.edu/public/Team_Caltech (Caltech) (eliminated)

So in fact, all 4 teams that have pre-qualified for the race have blogs and you can read up on their thoughts.

[Adam Shapiro]

Originally Posted by Bongle

I've just read that you guys have qualified (along with Stanford, CMU, and Virginia Tech) for the main event. Congratulations!

Yep, I got the call about that while at work today. It definitely made the day go faster. I'm very excited to see which of the remaining teams will continue on to the final event.

[Freddy Schurr]

There is no webcast of this event? Or is there?

[DanDon]

Originally Posted by Freddy Schurr

There is no webcast of this event? Or is there?

Originally Posted by Bongle

The webcast link should be at http://www.grandchallenge.org/ on Nov 3 if you have a laptop.

There ya go, Freddy.