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 .

We need a Google Maps Hacker

[Maddog Batty]

Can someone combine Google Maps with the XML here: http://www.grandchallenge.org/data/location.xml

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:We need a Google Maps Hacker

[pooya]

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

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

First races...then the WORLD!!

[Druox]

Sure, they're all just happy cars driving a fun race...until they rule us all!!
I, for one, welcome our four-wheel and rear-wheeled drive overlords, and pledge my allegiance to Emperor Camry.

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.

TGDaily.com also has a blog up

[not5150]

http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/10/08/darpagrandchalle nge2005/
With pictures :)

Most interesting one so far is when Caltech's Alice charged through a k-rail, knocking it over and then started up a berm towards reporters. It was E-Stopped just a few feet away from hitting the media.

any of the contestants here?

[Edmund Blackadder]

During last years challenge all contestants were complaining that the thing was rigged in order to get the red team to win. I.e. there were last minute rule changes for which the red team was prepared for, but nobody else was, and some contestants said they had an operational system ready yet they were not allowed to compete.

I am not at all surprised of this, since the red team is sponsored by the major military contractors and we all know how they basicaly control military procurement.

But I was wondering if similar shenanigans were happening this time around. Any of the competitors care to comment?

Re:any of the contestants here?

[Animats]

As a team leader of one of the teams eliminated at the NQE, I didn't see any visible favoritism by the DARPA staff. The teams that went to Primm are the teams that should have gone.

Funding is more of an issue. Teams were supposed to have no Government funding whatsoever, either direct or indirect. Yet MITRE had a team, and they're a quasi-governmental agency. CMU has received DARPA robotics contracts for years, as has Stanford. Red Whittaker of the CMU team is still the principal investigator on a NASA grant (#NAG5-12890) until February 2006. Stanford used software developed under DoD contract, although anyone can download it and they asked DARPA for permission. It's more of a revolving-door issue than direct diversion of Government funds.

But the real incentive for the big university teams was fear. If Joe's Auto Parts fielded a better robot than some university getting $20 million a year in robotics funding from DARPA, DARPA might well pull the plug on the school. CMU faced that prospect; originally, they weren't going to enter the Grand Challenge at all. The whole Grand Challenge was created because of unhappiness at DARPA with the rate of progress in mobile robotics. DARPA has been pouring robotics money into CMU and Stanford for thirty years, without getting much back. The head of DARPA, Dr. Tony Tether, decided that it was time to do something about that. It worked.

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=

Soldiers: Yay!; Truckers: Boo!

[Saeger]

Last year the best car made it only 7 miles. This year all cars but one have made it at least 22 miles (so far), with three frontrunners past the 100mile mark (so far) and expected to finish.

Now that's some amazing progress.

This is great news for the soldiers soon to be removed the line of fire; "ominous" news for the millions of truckers and taxi drivers (in the US alone) who'll be quickly replaced over the next decade.

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

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!!