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No Cash Prize for Next DARPA Grand Challenge
General Lee's Peking writes to mention an Associated Press article about a sad development in the DARPA Grand Challenge. Because of some new DoD-related legislation, the organization will no longer be able to award the $2 Million prize to grand challenge winners. It's not all bad, though; they still get a trophy. From the article: "The absence of a lucrative cash prize has forced some teams to retool their game plan and others to drop out. Some fear it would be harder to attract corporate sponsors and hurt media coverage of the race, which drew a throng of reporters last year and inspired a PBS documentary. 'The icing on the cake is gone,' said Ivar Schoenmeyr, team leader of California-based Team CyberRider, which is retrofitting a Toyota Prius hybrid."
So much for recovering my development expenses on these ideas:
note: Sharks with Lasers is someone else's idea so I clearly can't try to compete with that one.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Stifling innovation- find out the Congress folks who pushed this legislation through and make sure their staff do a little "constituent services"
Not sure exactly what you mean there, but the Defense budget is the largest it has been in ages, it's perplexing that they'd choose to cut here, unless there's some bizarre (well, not in light of the privatisation of many military services and operations) pressure to keep this in other hands, ahem, those which would prefer to sell goods and services they develop at great expense (and thus need reimbursement) and clearly some bunch of college yahoos couldn't do as well.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Step 1. Buy Lexus LS460 with autopark
Step 2. Put ls460 backwards at starting line, tell it to park at finish line.
Step 3. Profit.
Business as usual for the military industry.
Yes. The money which is no longer available was prize money, as well as milestone prizes for the track B teams. The difference between track A and track B is that track A gives all its technology to the government at the end (in exchange for $1 million of development money), and track B has no such obligation. The track A funds (contracts rather than prizes) are still fully intact, so all of the track A teams are still in it. What's been cut out is the incentive for track B teams to enter. These are the teams that are NOT giving technology directly to the government, and are using the race as a vehicle for development of technology that can truly benefit the world in ways other than making robot death jeeps. Say, for example, saving hundreds of thousands of lives in traffic accidents every year.
So yes, I would much rather see a portion of the DoD's budget spent encouraging development of revolutionary safety technology for civilian drivers rather than a big contract to a traditional defense contractor for something that directly kills people. (Keep in mind, the funds were not -cut-, DARPA's authority to use them for prizes was simply removed.)
Interesting enough VW have already done it, see:n s_its.html
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/04/vw_abando
The VW Lupo is available but it only does 78.4mpg(US). Their development car did much better: 0.89 litres of diesel per 100 kilometres (264 mpg) top speed was still 75mph. but they could not make the commercial version cheaper than $25K
RTFA - Although DARPA has pulled the award, the current legislation does not bar awards. It moves the authorization level up one position above the DARPA director.
All they now have to do is get permission from their boss.
It appears they have chosen the ignorant route and - instead of getting requested authorization - simply claim they are not allowed
Sounds like typical Government Bureaucrats to me.
I'm on the Princeton DARPA team, and we're on Track B. The prize money at the end was a nice incentive and certainly garnered attention for the competition, but that's not where the real harm lies. For passing the site visit, there was a prize of $50,000, and for making it to the finals, a $250,000 prize (don't quote me on the amounts, that's just my recollection). These milestone prizes would've gone a long way to offset the financial disparity between Track A teams (who've received substantial DARPA grants) and the Track B teams. We're on a shoestring budget, and that money would've been incredibly useful. Instead, we now have to go the entire distance without a dime from the government.
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