Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

DARPA Urban Challenge
November 4, 2007

About three hours from now, when it is just before 10 am pacific time, the three winners out of the six vehicles that crossed the finish line in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge will be announced.  

“Vehicles competing in the Urban Challenge will have to think like human drivers and continually make split-second decisions to avoid moving vehicles, including robotic vehicles without drivers, and operate safely on the course. The urban setting adds considerable complexity to the challenge faced by the robotic vehicles, and replicates the environments where many of today’s military missions are conducted.”   
                      --Dr. Norman Whitaker, Urban Challenge Program Manager

A detailed photo of the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge op-area is available, complete with zoom in ability, at: http://www.grandchallenge.org/darpauc07/watchtherace/trackingmap.html 
see also the dirt roads which look a lot like the previous two challenges in 
miniature.  These turned out to be difficult areas for the teams that thought they were 
through with the desert obstacle course part of the race series.

Did you miss your chance to develop a driverless vehicle for the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge in your spare time?  Not all is lost.  If you are willing to follow a former member of the USMC into the unknown, William L. "Red" Whittaker - Autonomous and teleoperated field robotics; Fredkin Professor of Robotics, The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University; Director, Field Robotics Center, Robotics Institute; Chief Scientist, Robotics Engineering Consortium, Carnegie Mellon University; Chief Scientist, RedZone Robotics; Principal Research Scientist, The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. 1986 - 1996; is looking for a few good men and women (and sponsors) to be on his team trying for the $20 million Google Lunar X Prize.   This would be one heck of a resume bullet point for those of you looking to make your resume stand out from the rest.  Only a few people will get this chance. http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/global/2007/summer/to-the-moon.shtml

While we are waiting for the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge winners to be announced here is a picture of Tartan Racing's Team Leader Red Whitaker and Linda Graham, our AIM Team rep / Control Engineering Magazine researcher along with a bot that is a desert veteran.



GO ROBOTS !

Posted by Paul Grayson on November 4, 2007 | Comments (0)