DARPA Grand Challenge Updates

Red Team writes "Today is the day. The official race route for the DARPA Grand Challenge was released to the first five teams at 4:00AM PST this morning. Our race planners are pouring over the race route getting ready for the launch. H1ghlander will start first at sunrise, around 6:15AM PST, followed by Stanford and then Sandstorm. For real-time updates on the race, you can track the Red Team race-day blog or catch the webcast on the official Grand Challenge page." Update: 10/08 20:57 GMT by Z : USSJoin writes "Stanford Racing, home of Stanley, has just finished the 131.2 mile DARPA Grand Challenge course. Considering that the CalTech Vehicle (Alice) jumped off the track toward onlookers only 8.3 miles in, this demolition derby-meets-AI demo has certainly been exciting."

Comments

Popular Science has most recent updates

[technoextreme]

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/darpachallenge/1b7a1e 7eef0d6010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html Apparently, the teams all ready have traveled four times as far than last year. It is great progress for a year.

Re:Popular Science has most recent updates

[mroch]

Found it, on the Grand Challenge home page: "Kurjanowicz also said that the course 'is tough, tougher than last year,' but added: 'The vehicles are better, smarter. That's why we held the NQE [National Qualification Event],' he said. 'We wanted to make sure they are capable of completing the course."

Re:Popular Science has most recent updates

[Jay Carlson]

(MITRE is probably best known as "that contractor who decided that Windows NT should run that battleship that was stranded when Windows NT BSODed on its test run".)

Cite? MITRE didn't exist when the final US battleship was built, nor did MIT Lincoln Labs. I suppose the MIT Radiation Laboratory was contemporaneous in 1944, but I expect their expertise in OS recommendations was limited. I suppose this lack of knowledge of operating systems is excusable as there weren't any operating systems.

Oh, you mean the USS Yorktown? That's a guided missile cruiser, and back in the old days the hull would have been called a destroyer, before the Navy decided to change the nomenclature. Little bit of a difference between a destroyer hull and a battleship, but hey, AC abuse is par for the course.

As much I relish the image of some poor ensign yelling, "Screen's blue, SIR!", nobody seems to think this was an OS-level crash. And most of the google hits I can find on "navy smart ship mitre" point to things like Think Outside The COTS . Scrolling down to Figure 1, there's a list of potential pitfalls of commercial-off-the-shelf software.

If this seems familiar, you've been a slashdot reader for a few years: MITRE Corp. Report On Open Source In Government .

Re:Sensors sensors sensors

[mroch]

Did you read anything about this? The course is specifically designed to prevent teams from relying solely on GPS by making them go through tunnels where they will lose their signals. Many of the bots have cameras, lasers, radar, etc.

Re:We need a Google Maps Hacker

[aerodyno]

Here's an Excel spreadsheet that displays that data and automatically updates every minute (it's a start)

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~savraj/gc-live.xls

Re:DARPA's site for status update, not team sites!

[Maddog Batty]

There was a 10 mile error in the data from the start. Darpa corrected it which made it jump back as you noted. It is believed that the current data is more accurate read the thread here: https://dtsn.darpa.mil/grandc/forum/topic.asp?topi c_id=1652&forum_id=30&Topic_Title=Post+Time!&forum _title=Grand+Challenge+Event&M=False&S=

Wikipedia Article

[KrackHouse]

I'm updating the Wikipedia page. Updates with links to videos plus google maps - add stuff if you've got it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_DARPA_Grand_Chal lenge

Re:We need a Google Maps Hacker

[pooya]

Kinda late, but here it is. Map is working: http://www.pooyak.com/utils/dgc2005/

Stanford racing team has won...

[Harry Balls]

...with their entry "Stanley", a modified VW Tuareg.

Total time: 7 hours, 8 minutes for a distance of 132 miles, which amounts to an average of 18.5 mph.

Re:Stanford racing team has won...

[Xerotope]

It's not so much an issue of adding penalty time, but subtracting pause time.

Both Stanford and Sandstorm have been paused several times to prevent them from running into the back of H1ghlander. It seems the roads are too narrow in most places to allow passing to occur, hence they stop the rear robot to allow a safe following distance to accumulate. The time the robot is in pause state does not seem to be taken into account in the unofficial results on the grandchallenge.org site.

Note On DARPA Times

[Anonymous Coward]

Just thought I would mention a bit about the "Live update" times on the DARPA Grand Challenge Site since everyone keeps referencing them and they haven't been worth a damn all day:

1 - The timers were started ~20 minutes before the bots took off for at least Red Team Too, Stanford & Red Team and never reset.
2 - The bots were sent out at 5 minute intervals in this order H1ghlander; Stanley; Sandstorm, but Sandstorms time as only been 2 minutes off Stanley's all day, hmmmm.
3 - As someone mentioned the official clock for each bot is stopped if it is ever paused by the chase truck but it is clear that since the clock for each of the current finishers is not stopped YET, that the "live update" times are not linked to this official timer.

So, unless someone is posting from Primm or DARPA has posted official finish time since I started this post we all should just sit tight till those times are out.

Although, since Stanley started second and finished first he is most likely the winner (no, I'm not from Stanford; actually from CMU).

Kudos to all those that competed and Congrats to those that finished!!