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Stanford's Stanley wins DARPA Grand Challenge

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the congrats-to-all-for-competing dept.

tonyquan writes "DARPA has just announced that Stanford's "Stanley" autonomous ground vehicle has won the Grand Challenge, a $2 million contest for driverless vehicles over a 132 mile course in California's Mohave Desert. Stanley's winning time over the course was 6 hours, 53 minutes and 58 seconds, for an average speed of 19.1 mph. Second was Carnegie Mellon's Sandstorm (7:04:50), third went to another CMU vehicle "H1ghlander" (7:14:00) and fourth to the Gray Team's KAT-5 (7:30:16) More info from DARPA."

5 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. so wait.. by molo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Last year they had NO vehicles even make it out of the obstacle course.. and this year they had several vehicles actually complete the desert course?? What gives?

    -molo

    --
    Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
    1. Re:so wait.. by Zathrus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are several factors here. First and formost, the vehicles are more capable. The software is vastly better and the hardware is somewhat improved. Did you think that they've been sitting around doing nothing for the past 17 months? They've been working on improvements since the last challenge, and they've spent a lot more time actually testing their vehicles in desert terrain.

      There are some people who say that this year's course is far easier than last year's. I don't know myself -- I'm not involved with any of the teams and I don't have detailed knowledge of the courses. But there has been some commentary by those involved to this effect, as well as from bystanders. One huge difference is that the most difficult part of the course (Beer Bottle Pass, a narrow road with a steep drop off on one side) was at the end of the course this year, while the equivalent part was near the start last year. Stanford's leader is quoted as saying something to the effect that if they'd inverted last year's course then a lot of cars would've gone much further, even if none of them finished. The complete lack of media attention last year may have been one reason why DARPA swapped the course around -- it's rather anti-climactic to write about a race where the best racer hardly even got off the finish line and leads to the kind of stories DARPA really doesn't want to see (waste of taxpayer money, will never work, etc.).

      In any case, given that less than 25% of the vehicles finished, I'd hardly say that it was a trivial thing to do. It's still amazing. Congrats to those who did, and to all of those who participated for that matter -- it's quite an accomplishment, even if there's a long way to go still before this is really usable in a real world environment.

  2. Good news by Data+Link+Layer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I honestly didn't think this contest would ever be won. Maybe in 20 years we can have auto driving cars that can make it so there is next to 0 car accidents.

    1. Re:Good news by lowrydr310 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Is your dune buggy street legal?

      It's funny how our laws are written. I know a guy who built a Lamborghini Countach kit car out of some steel tubing, a pre-made fiberglass body, and an engine that isn't even close to passing federal emission laws. He had no problems getting it inspected, registered, and getting a license plate for it. Custom choppers are the same: It's easy to weld some tubing together and slap on wheels, an engine, and a transmission and you're out on the streets in no time!

      I want to import a new Toyota Hilux diesel pickup because a compact diesel pickup truck isn't available in the USA. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to do this because it hasn't been tested against US crash standards and the engine isn't EPA certified (despite being less polluting than just about any diesel engine currently offered in the USA).

  3. Team Grey is the Real Winner by humankind · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When you look at the results, and you see two colleges with virtually unlimited resources and millions of dollars spent on their vehicles, huge corporate sponsors and engineers at their beck and call from Boeing to Catepillar, who finished, and then this dinky little Team Grey from a suburb of New Orleans, with a splintered development team as a result of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and they FINISHED just behind the big guys, leaving other heavily-funded vehicles in the dust.

    Relatively speaking, a small indy group, even if their time was a tad slower than CMU or Stanford, essentially put those three teams to shame when you compare the resources they had available to them.

    The real story here is who is behind the Grey team's car. It must be a far superior design than either CMU or Stanford's considering the limited resources and experience they had in addressing the challenge.