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DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 Rules Announced

Posted by timothy on from the and-roll-tape dept.

Mr_KnowItAll writes "Our friends at DARPA have released the proposed rules for the 2005 Grand Challenge. They learned their lesson from the first one, now they will expect teams to submit a video demonstration of their vehicle's ability to complete the course before being invited to participate. Good, but they're also advancing the timeline to the point that it will be very hard to any team to start now and hope to participate. After all the fuss at DARPA's last-minute rule changes in '04, it's interesting to see that they're offering the proposed rules for community review and feedback."

5 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why robot cars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Wheeled vehicles are more fuel efficient...feel better now?

  2. Re:Fun fun fun. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Maybe I should have been clearer. I am a CMU alumni. I don't worry about the others who mess up a hundred feet from the starting line. I guess they look foolish. But the CMU Red team went ~7 miles and broke an axel on a nasty road hazard that many human drivers couldn't navigate. But people like you make sweeping statements about nobody being close. BS, the CMU team is close, everyone else, well, I don't know. Some are better than others. Most are very smart. Shadows are a bitch for recognition algorithms and plants play havok with other sensors. Many times it is more about which sensor is most accurate, which is a difficult thing that humans are uniquely good at.

  3. Re:Hamstrung Technology by Hacksaw · · Score: 5, Informative
    They, however, have chosen to not allow any previously government funded software.


    No, they exclude only government funded software not commercially available. And most government contractors, especially the smaller ones, will happily license their software to you.
    --

    All the technology in the world won't hide your lack of vision, talent, or understanding.

  4. Re:Hard to participate? by Mr_KnowItAll · · Score: 5, Informative
    Good luck, and start now because you're already way behind schedule! (The team I'm on got to the qualifying event, so I've lived the behind-schedule lifestyle)

    You're largely correct in observing that the components are mostly available, but you'll find that there are still significant gaps in the capabilities of the sensors that you can get "off-the-shelf", and integration tasks always seem to introduce new issues and complexities. Try to attend the competitor's conference on August 14th and learn what the other teams have discovered in their development process, you'll save time that way. Plan, design, budget and then work like mad... and remember to have fun while you're doing it.

  5. Re:Are they doing this wrong? by Pseudonym · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's kind of what they did this year. The trouble is that only one entry (which, incidentally, is the entry that made it furthest in the race proper) actually made it through the qualifying round.

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});