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Fifteen Teams Selected for DARPA Grand Challenge
doughnuthole writes "The official posting has been made of the 15 teams that qualified for the Grand Challenge, seven of which completed the entire QID course. The top three teams, and thus those who get to start first, were the Red Team, SciAutonics II, and Team Caltech. The race starts at 6:30 am Saturday, with teams leaving every 5 minutes. A live webcast will be available at grandchallenge.org." Reader uss_valiant writes "Tomshardware runs an article about DARPA's Grand Challenge. It features new pictures, the DARPA video of the qualification and covers some technical challenges such as the obstacle detection."
For all those of us who don't have access to the DARPA channel, we can stream the telecast live from here.
These are the same people who appeared in this slashdot story and seems to be different from the "live webcast" mentioned in the story which only appears to have a tracking feature.
If a team leaves every 5 minutes, (and assuming the first few hundred yards is relatively easy going - you find that on most courses of any nature), then we are going to have an awful lot of bunching at the first point the vehicles start dropping below 25mph. Interestingly, the rules state that the team in front (i.e. being passed) has right of way, unless E-stopped.
Exercise your right not to vote. thinkoutside.org
CNN is running a story about the DARPA race/challenge, in case anyone is curious.
Actually I watched a show last night and they Highlighted the Red Team's Vehicle. After watching the show I was given no idication of any other competitors, but they didn't provide any reasons why the Red Team might not finish. Hell, after what I watched I'm wondering if any other teams are really even playing the same game... That is one high priced Hummer.
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
Assuming that "6.30 am" means local time in Barstow, California, that would be 6.30 PST -0800, or 14.30 GMT.
Updated on the live status board A bit short of the original 250miles.
Info
Word. What's wrong with Video Lan Server or something? Must be NDH syndrome.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
They hit that same spot on the car (right front panel) coming right out of the starting gate. Didn't even make it to the first turn.
The web guy just said they might retry. So the damage cant be bad.
Other unoffical updates:
Sandstorm is out with a blown motor.
Sci II is supposedly still running.
Caltech is still running technically but is going nowhere fast. Its not stuck or anything tho.
Dad is running.
#25 has a stuck brake.
#23 has GPS problems but they may restart.
Navigator is stuck real bad in a fence. they are cutting it out.
#15 lost it hydralic pump
Cajunbot hit a obstacle right out of the gate.
Ensco hauled ass out of the gate, made its first turn OK but then rolled on the next.
The webcast briefly mentioned that there is natural obstacle on course that needs to be removed. However, I believe that once the vehicle is disabled it's out of the race.
The motorcycle entry was Team Blue - Ghostrider - not CyberRider.
Cyberrider was the desert racer sand rail:
www.cyberrider.org
I think it just fell over, and they withdrew it because they couldn't get it to go across the start line.
ESM (End System Multicast) is a peer-to-peer system to deliver video of any kind (such as QuickTime) to lots of clients. The idea is to allow people to watch video while acting as both client and server, thus reducing the originator's bandwidth needs.
A friend of mine works on ESM. It was developed at CMU and has been used for many recent lectures on campus.
For more information, click here.
Perhaps a pain in the butt to deal with, but a tracking client for Linux is available.
The Golem Group vehicle was just disabled. That's the last one. It's over. SciAutonetics II and Red Team made it to 7 miles. Team DAD made it to mile 6. The Golem Group is listed with 5 miles, but the map never showed them much past the starting line. Nobody else got very far.
I work with autonomous robots in a lab setting. It's difficult enough to get a 2 wheeled robot the size of an RC car that moves 75 cm/sec to navigate its environment reliably. Failure is something you simply have to learn to live with and learn from (many computer scientists have a tough time getting used to the idea that these systems cannot nor ever will work 100% of the time). Honestly, you learn way more from failure than success in this business.
To get a full sized vehicle working at battlefield speeds with battlefield obstacles is a monumental challenge and almost certainly guaranteed to fail on the first try. Autonomous robotics is still a very young field, and the research published out there is generally some pretty rudimentary stuff done in a lab. Translating that stuff into a big complicated machine in a big complicated environment is a hell of a task and probably demonstrates some substantial holes in the current tech that weren't apparent from the confines of the lab.
This DARPA challenge does two excellent things for the field: Gives it a real goal and gives it a real deadline. Alot of research doesn't have a deadline and so researchers spend much of their time spinning their wheels (heh) on some of what i would consider, less important issues. This challenge gives a genuine goal to accomplish in a certain amount of time.
I definiately want to see the post-mortem on each team to see where they failed. In 2 more years, with this failure experience gained, perhaps a quarter of the teams will succeed or at least get further down the course.
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From the wires of the Associated Press: