"Verizon has a moral obligation to start something like this from the fact that their customers have been paying extra for it for years"
Laws are designed to remove morality from business. The only rule of business is to maximize profits. If it takes doing something immoral but legal, businesses will do it, and it is immature to expect any company to do otherwise. Even if it is immoral and only slightly illegal (fines) it may still be in the best interest of the company to make a profit while paying the fines. -- Think of the Microsoft anti-trust cases.
I am running the caltechvsmit.com site. The one point was for last years retaliation against the "The Other IT" banner. They get at least 10 points for this; I haven't decided yet. (I am arbitrarily keeping score).
Marfa is a small town near what used to be an army fort established to keep Indians out of Texas. The lights were unexplained even back then. Sometimes the army would chase after the lights thinking that they were enemy campfires, but they never seemed to catch them....maybe just a legend. But, having been there, if it were caused by headlights I imagine it would follow the same path every time -- whereas in actuality they move about seemingly random in the sky.
As a member of Team Caltech I can say that next year's race going to be much more exciting for a couple of reasons.
First off, returning teams already have a foundation to build upon, both in existing hardware and in technical experience. Writing software for a race like this is almost impossible to do without testing it on a working vehicle (i.e. testing in simulation only works out major problems, but does not translate well to desert racing). For example, Caltech spent 6 months getting actuators and drivers to work well enough to hand over the vehicle to the software team. As soon as that happened, we noticed several problems interfacing the actuators to the software (e.g. updating actuator positions too fast locked them up and made them stop responding). Ultimately our vehicle was not even waypoint following accurately until late February. Most teams were in the same state we were in - racing the clock, plagued by bad hardware (sensors and actuators) and inexperience. BUT we were very close to being very good. If they re-ran the race mid-summer this year the results from all of the teams would be very different. Looking to next year, teams have working vehicles which means 1 full year of onsite testing instead of 2 months.
Another thing that is interesting about the next race is the timing relative to academic calendars. A lot of teams are university driven and it was very difficult for students to devote enough time to the project while still handling their school requirements (definitely true with a Caltech workload). The next race is at the very end of the summer which means that a crew can work on the vehicle full time for three months before the next race.
Whether or not someone wins the next race is entirely up to DARPA. By next year there will be 5+ teams that could navegate last-race's course in
Anyway, good luck to all teams...especially new teams - you have quite a hurdle in front of you. See you in 1 year.
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"Verizon has a moral obligation to start something like this from the fact that their customers have been paying extra for it for years"
Laws are designed to remove morality from business. The only rule of business is to maximize profits. If it takes doing something immoral but legal, businesses will do it, and it is immature to expect any company to do otherwise. Even if it is immoral and only slightly illegal (fines) it may still be in the best interest of the company to make a profit while paying the fines. -- Think of the Microsoft anti-trust cases.
I am running the caltechvsmit.com site. The one point was for last years retaliation against the "The Other IT" banner. They get at least 10 points for this; I haven't decided yet. (I am arbitrarily keeping score).
Marfa is a small town near what used to be an army fort established to keep Indians out of Texas. The lights were unexplained even back then. Sometimes the army would chase after the lights thinking that they were enemy campfires, but they never seemed to catch them. ...maybe just a legend. But, having been there, if it were caused by headlights I imagine it would follow the same path every time -- whereas in actuality they move about seemingly random in the sky.
First off, returning teams already have a foundation to build upon, both in existing hardware and in technical experience. Writing software for a race like this is almost impossible to do without testing it on a working vehicle (i.e. testing in simulation only works out major problems, but does not translate well to desert racing). For example, Caltech spent 6 months getting actuators and drivers to work well enough to hand over the vehicle to the software team. As soon as that happened, we noticed several problems interfacing the actuators to the software (e.g. updating actuator positions too fast locked them up and made them stop responding). Ultimately our vehicle was not even waypoint following accurately until late February. Most teams were in the same state we were in - racing the clock, plagued by bad hardware (sensors and actuators) and inexperience. BUT we were very close to being very good. If they re-ran the race mid-summer this year the results from all of the teams would be very different. Looking to next year, teams have working vehicles which means 1 full year of onsite testing instead of 2 months.
Another thing that is interesting about the next race is the timing relative to academic calendars. A lot of teams are university driven and it was very difficult for students to devote enough time to the project while still handling their school requirements (definitely true with a Caltech workload). The next race is at the very end of the summer which means that a crew can work on the vehicle full time for three months before the next race.
Whether or not someone wins the next race is entirely up to DARPA. By next year there will be 5+ teams that could navegate last-race's course in
Anyway, good luck to all teams...especially new teams - you have quite a hurdle in front of you. See you in 1 year.