Darpa Grand Challenge is a competition that teams have to make an autonomous vehicle which can avoid obstacles, obey traffic rules, using GPS, on-board sensors, and a data file. http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp
I really want to participate but there should be a team and needs a lot of sponsors.
does Anybody know how we should form a team and get sponsors.
also anybody intrested in participating?
Borna Emami
FRC 39
Highland High school
Gilbert, Az
I’ve seen this before, I saw the 06’ one and thought it was very interesting, I hope I can do this when I get into college.
I’m definitely interested, but I’m all the way in Illinois. 
I can ask around. One of our mentors who is a Robojacket alumni is currently working for tech doing their Darpa thing. I know it is A LOT of money… But I can ask him if you would like.
I’m currently on the Cornell DARPA Urban Challenge team. It’s definitely an amazing experience, however I don’t think it would be very feasible at a high school level unfortunately. It’s essentially a full-time job (even more so than FIRST if you can believe it!) for everyone on the team which includes some grad/phd students and a few professors. Not to mention the incredible amount of resources it takes to build a vehicle.
This year DARPA was able to provide grants to 11 teams, including my own, as initial funding. Teams could submit grant proposals and the selected teams would receive $1 million to proceed. I promise you absolutely none of this money will go unused to give you an idea of what it takes to compete.
I’m not sure if there will be another challenge after this one but I certainly hope so. I would definitely recommend getting into it in college if it’s available to you, and if not see if you can start a team. Remember, colleges tend to have a lot more in the way of financial resources than most high schools. This competition has been a huge learning experience for me, just as FIRST was all 4 years, and it even helped secure a co-op for me this fall at Cisco.
If anyone has any questions, or would like any more information, feel free to ask. Also, if anyone’s planning a trip to Cornell any time in the future and would like to see what we’re working on feel free to let me know. I’d be happy to show you around.
This competition is by and far beyond what most (if any) high schools are capable of, as some have stated already.
I don’t believe there are a massive amount of colleges competing in it, however if one near you isn’t, you can always see if they are competing in other DARPA or other robotic challenges as well. I know the University of Arizona has a team competing in an autonomous-aircraft competition for DARPA, where they must build an autonomous reconnaissance plane that can detect open windows/doors/holes in a building and drop in a robot “spy” through the opening during a flyby, as well as take images of the targeted building. I’m planning on doing this there next year and one of the former members of my team will be a lead in the group next year as well.
The only other robotics competition I can think of off the top of my head is the firefighting robot competition, where robots must find an open flame in a room in a house, go to it and extinguish it, all under autonomous control.