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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.
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6:30? That means nothing in nowadays world!
WHAT TIMEZONE???
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
And the odds on any of these machines even finishing the challange? Pretty slim, Red Team looks to have the best chances, pretty nice looking machine they've got going as well. All in the name of science and progression I guess .. but if the army vehicles auto targeting equipment couldn't distinguish the difference between a helicoptor and an incomming vehichle .. what are the odds on the software they put on the 'finished' development being any better? also pretty slim.
May as well just spend the money on deveoloping the something worthwhile.
If at first you DON'T succeed, Skydiving is NOT for YOU!!
Informative? Wait I can do this do:
Last year I had a pottery course with a person who claimed her sisters, friends, dog trainers mother in law actually handled funding at DARPA. She said that this was actually a nefarious plan to speed up the development of killer robot cars that will one day rule the world!
How is this funding a university? The prize of $1m is unlikely to or perhaps only barely just cover the costs of any serious entry. People clearly aren't in it for the money.
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The prior event was the QID it was designed to determine the saftey of the vehicles only. they didn't change the rules mid-event (as the earilier post would have you believe). But a prior to the start of the QID.
A lot of folks are spending tons of time and energy attacking a hard problem. If DARPA thinks they deserve to watch their car leave the "official" start line, it's DARPA's decision to make. It's DARPA's event, they can run it however they want to, if they wanted to tape rubber ducks on the hoods prior to departure, they could ask eveyone to do so.
Winning the race might be worth $1m up front... but how much is a contract to build robotic vehicles for the US military worth? And of course, many universities would be researching automated robots even if the competition did not exist; winning an extra $1m is just a bonus.
When I was a Freshman at CMU, I worked on a research programming project translating a bunch of the Navigation code for this self-driving HMMWV ("Hum vee"). It was originally written in C, and we converted it to Ada... though I bet it's been reverted back to a more versatile language.
It used multiple cameras mounted at different heights to build a 3D view of it's surroundings, and could judge all kinds of obstacles... though at the time (7 years ago) had a lot of trouble with streams and shadows. I was amazed that it could recognize stoplights correctly, and even signaled when it was changing lanes on a street.
Either way, it was a great project for a young would-be programmer to work on, very amazing stuff, and lots of cool toys to see in the Robotics Institute there.
-Hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned for
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.
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.
Watching the live broadcast, the cyberrider just refuses to fight! The flagman waved the green go flag and instead of charging like a good infantryman it just threw itself down to the ground! Of course its from Berkeley so no that suprising I guess.
DARPA has announced that in light of the difficulties encountered this year, next's year event will be reworked as the "reasonably-ordinary-challenge' and consist of an autonomous vehicle locating the nearest McDonalds, ordering burgers and fries, and returning before they get cold.