DARPA Report
The long awaited DARPA robot vehicle
race was held in California on March 13, 2004. Of the 150 odd
teams who originally registered for the kickoff conference in February
of 2003, only about 20 teams showed up for the competition. 15
teams were finally qualified to participate in the actual race. Here is
a full report by Alan
Boyle. CMU got the farthest - but still only 7.4 miles.
They had a budget of $5 million and were the favorite going in due to
the work they did on a previous contract with DARPA for an autonomous
land vehicle.
Here is how the robots finished
- Read Team (Carnegie Mellon University): Caught on berm, mile 7.4
- SciAutonics II: Stuck on embankment, mile 6.7
- Digital Auto Drive: Hung up on a rock, mile 6.0
- Golem Group: Stopped on hill, mile 5.2
- Team Caltech: Wentoff course, mile 1.3
- TerraMax: Could not proceed, mile 1.2
- SciAutonics I: Lost route at mile 0.75
- Team CIMAR: Caught in wire at mile 0.45
- Team ENSCO: Flipped at mile 0.2
- Team CajunBot: Brushed wall out of chute.
- Palos Verdes hit wall in start area.
- Axion circled wrong way in start area.
- Virginia Tech: brakes locked up in start area.
- TerraHawk, Blue Team withdrew before start.
The actual route was
142 miles long. Here are some pictures of some of the
competitors vehicles.
CajunBot
Cal Tech
Digital Auto Drive
Doom Buggy
Golem
Motorcycle Bot
Phantasm
Red Team (CMU)
Rover Systems
SciAutonics II
Comments? Email me at crwillis@androidworld.com
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