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Grand Challenge Videos Posted
awtbfb writes "For those readers not fortunate enough to watch the satellite feed on the day of the race, videos of the Grand Challenge have been quietly posted on the race site. These include official AVI and DVD compilations and unedited clips in Quicktime MP4. The compilations also include some footage from the chase helicopters. Feel free to yell 'No! Turn right! Your other right!' as you watch these."
Gotta love DARPA. They brought us stealth technology, GPS, and ofcourse the Internet! It's good to see them promote some technology within the country. Seems like since the 80's (?) everything with a plug or batteries has come from elsewhere
Has anyone ever given thought to setting up a BitTorrent tracker for /.? Then whenever a story referencing large downloads is posted, (say, anything >10MB, perhaps) either Slashdot editors can actually seed the torrent, or just some /.er out there with something fatter than my POS 21.6Kbps modem connection.
Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
Very carefully.
Of course, not having a driver helps.
From what one of the Red Team guys told us afterwards, they were one meter to the left of whatever the GPS signal said. So naturally it hit EVERY obstacle on the way up there. The funny thing is that they couldn't decide if was because of them crashing it or if the GPS signal was screwed (I'll go for the crashing story).
Then it fell into a ditch well outside of the town of Dagget (a great vacation spot if you plan on killing yourself), where I was WAITING, with a tiny little radio. Apparently it freaked out because it was stuck, and it started going back and forth. It kept doing that until the tires literally caught on fire. I think they blew up some bearings or gears or something else related to the axles/differentials. We were 21 miles out on the "race course", so you can imagine my despair of it not getting there...
I was hoping they would come over by me. Right before my position they were supposed to go off the highway (they would have been on Route 66 at this point) and then they would have gone under a concrete railway underpass.
A few things people were wondering:
1. Would they make it that far? No.
2. IF they got there, will going under this railway underpass, lined with concrete and who-knows-what kind of metal, would the signal get lost?
3. Do you thing a freight train running over over that bridge every 10 minutes might screw something up?
4. If they got it past the underpass, will it hit that pretty natural gas meter station directly after that or will it turn right like it's supposed to!
Oh, well. I had fun anyway...
Next year they plan on having it again. And the prize is supposed to be 2 million dollars.
For the record, the CMU team was assisted by the Dashwerks DashPC project ([ironically] seen earlier today here on Slashdot.
Dashwerks has provided advice, notes, and exclusive IP to [at least one] member of the CMU DARPA team members for the past year or so.
It's very fulfilling to see underdog project(s) such as these in the spotlight and taking a lead position in their respective industries.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Exactly. And they weren't supposed to rely only upon GPS because it might be intermittent, but because DARPA gave them only *waypoints*, locations they were required to pass close to, as opposed to a complete route! The waypoints were only supposed to be numerous enough to plot a general path across the desert, but not NEARLY enough to guide every foot of the vehicles' travel. The vehicle's sensors need to be good enough that a clear path can be computed. What if there's 300 meters of lazily winding road, with a big pile of rocks on one side, and a dropoff on the other, between where you and the next waypoint? So you have to wonder what the Red Team member meant by "we were within one meter of GPS". At best, it's a red herring. At worst, he didn't know what he was talking about.