Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

DARPA Urban Challenge update
September 12, 2007

The conference call today with the PR reps for the DARPA Urban Challenge covered a lot of interesting points.  You need to know that everything is booked solid in Victorville, CA.  If you don't already have your room reservations confirmed for the elimination trials and race, plan to bring your RV and camp.



Come to Victorville and see your Defense tax dollars at work.
The DARPA race in Victorville, CA is in two parts both of which are open to the public and admission is free.  The first part is the National Qualification Event (NQE) which runs from October 26-31, 2007.   This will be a series of trials for each of the vehicles to make sure they are fully functional and safe to be let loose on the course race day. The NQE will reduce the field of vehicles from the 36 that there are now to a field of 20 for the race.  The second part is the actual race itself which is called the DARPA Urban Challenge Final Event  (DUCFE).  The first of the 20 vehicles in this rally style race will leave the starting line at 0700 PDT on November 3, 2007.   The final scores and determination of a winner may be announced at media event and celebration the following day - so plan to stick around for that.

For those of you who will be attending the race in person there will be a spectator area at the starting line and a tent with chairs and a Jumbotron fed from cameras strategically placed around the course.

For those of us who will be saving energy (and money) by not traveling to the race the good news is that there will be several ways that we can follow the play by play action.  There is going to be a satellite feed, so if you have friends at the TV station, you can watch the race and the "B" roll background stories and interviews of the teams.  If you don't have connections at the TV station or a big dish of your own, the action will be webcast.
There will be media observation points along the route - so watch for TV coverage of the race.  If you want to wait for the smoke and dust to clear and watch a well constructed documentary of what happened, Discovery Channel is putting together a six part series on the DARPA Urban Challenge.  Depending on how the race goes, you might want to have the DVD.

Stand by for more info as it becomes available.

Posted by Paul Grayson on September 12, 2007 | Comments (0)