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DARPA's Autonomous Vehicle Challenge Too Popular?
Tim writes "Mobilerobotics.org has an editorial accompanying a copy of a letter to one of the teams entering the DARPA Grand Challenge 1 million dollar autonomous vehicle race, in which DARPA admits to underestimating the number of teams that can actually partipate in the actual race. They figure they've only got room for 20 teams, and more than 100 have applied. The writer of the editorial argues that if more than 20 teams can qualify safely and technically, DARPA should have to chose the 20 cheapest financed teams. What should DARPA do to sort out these problems?" CNET News has more on the high turn-out, while DARPA ponders its next step.
The bottom line of the whole thing is that people have invested time and money in the research and development behind their vehicles. What DARPA should do is run the course multiple times with the max # of participants, or an even division of participants, but run all of the contestant vehicles through, and time/rate them on their traversal of the course. Then pick the X top competitors and run them all through again to pick a winner. Or something. But you can't honestly expect people, who, on the word of DARPA, undertook to research and build something as difficult and complex as an autonomous vehicle, to just walk away because DARPA didn't consider limiting the number of entries before they announced the contest. Adapt the competition to suit the response..... and you'll be certain you didn't throw the best idea out arbitratily to cut down the field.