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DARPA Grand Challenge Teams Submit Videos to DARPA
doughnuthole writes "The deadline for DARPA Grand Challenge teams to submit their videos to DARPA just passed and some have posted them online. Some of the teams with these videos posted are Team Caltech, Axion Racing, Virginia Tech (on the Media page), Insight Racing, and UMass Dartmouth. The Grand Challenge is a 175 mile race run by fully autonomous vehicles. Since no teams completed the 2004 race, DARPA decided to run it again, this time for $2 million."
but where I live it seems most of the cars on the road are self driven. The person behind the wheel is usually taking care of more pressing things like chatting on the phone, eating, putting on makeup, etc.
One of my buddies is on one of these teams (which will remain nameless). According to him, one of the major problems last year was the enormous amount of time spent on sensor and hardware development vs. the incredibly small amount of time spent on software development and testing. When you have an autonomous vehicle with great realtime terrain mapping capabilities, but with no collision detection code (!), you get a hunk of metal with great vision that likes to run into the same bush over and over again. Other teams did have collision detection in, which would back the vehicle up when a potential collision was detected. However, the vehicle would pick up too many potential collisions (lots of bushes and rocks in the desert) and continously back up! Just goes to show you that developing the algorithms for these things is pretty important. Let's hope they get it right this year... although the chances are pretty slim.
This thing is the SportsMobile from Team Caltech: just imagine the advances in science if Snoop Dogg had entered the DARPA Grand Challenge! Pimpin' hard but somebody's gotta do it I guess...
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It takes an amazing amount of work to get to even this stage, but we're making very fast progress.
We're a new, entirely student run team with a very limited budget, and always looking for sponsors. If you know anyone who can provide money, equipment, supplies or other assitance, let us know!
Interesting that the DARPA Challenge rule precludes hovercrafts from competing as they do not primarily use traction with the ground for propulsion.
I hope a team enters with a very large metal hollow sphere with gear teethmarks lining the inside and the machinery be a shaft, gyroscope and gears on both ends of unequal weight. The rest of the contents can be fuel/energy cells to power the rotating motion of the machinery inside -- it essentially just has to "throw" itself in a direction and keep rolling and steering. Travelling 175 miles ought to be possible as long as the terrain isn't ridiculous.
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A load of drone cars should be driven behind these competitors with models of druglords with machine guns, outlaws, corrupt police officers, and people to whom the teams own money.
That way, they should be able to defy gravity enough to land from a great height at a mere 30 degrees to the horizontal without breaking their suspension or driveshafts, and continue to turn even after front side collisions which would leave bushes and pinions bent (or wheels set to cambers which would normally cause them to no longer turn). They might even get speed boosts beyond the maximum engineering speed expected for the motor, gas and gearbox actually installed.
For an added bonus, they could have critically wounded people in the back, and an accomplice who absolutely has to jump out at 40mph somewhere mid course in order to continue some secret mission.
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Last year teams had such a short period of time, it was difficult to write all the necessary software and spend the time necessary to test and refine. Now many teams have learned a lot from the previous race and have much more time to improve. Several are now able to drive fully-autonomously at speeds of up to 20 mps while still avoiding obsticles and following a path. The maximum speeds will continue to increase and bugs will continue to be routed out as teams gear up for the race.
Most teams are not in it for the money, but for the sake of science and engineering. Some teams will spend close to that amount before all is said and done.
What DARPA wants is a combat-ready system that can drive cross-country with little or no outside help.
Different problems, and they require different solutions, and a system that could pass the DARPA test would be overkill and unsuitable for the daily commute to work.
I suppose that depends on what one considers a combat zone; dealing with "drivers" who are busy eating a bagel, reading the paper, drinking coffee, talking on a cell phone, shaving, and putting on makeup might require a combat-ready system.
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