DARPA Grand Challenge A Real Race At Last? 173
museumpeace writes "News.com has posted its second story in a week on a hopeful Grand Challenge contender. Stanford's Stanley, a VW Touareg run by 100,000 lines of code can hit 40 mph and has now traversed all but 3 miles of last year's desert course without problems. A few days earlier, Carnegie Mellon University's Team Red announced that its Sandstorm, a modified Hummer, had run 200 miles without any problems though on a closed track. DARPA cut the field to 40 in June and will cut it to 20 before the race in October."
Arguably the worst name ever for a product... (Score:1, Informative)
Princeton (Score:4, Informative)
The worlds most boring race (Score:3, Informative)
Boring as hell. Interesting, but very tedious.
Machine moves 10 feet, stops.
Moves 5 feet, stops.
Moves 40 feet, stops.
Turns 10 degrees.
Turns 15 degrees.
Moves 10 feet, stops.
Hopefully they've picked up the pace a bit. Otherwise they'll never go 200 miles through the open desert in the alloted time.
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Too Bad (Score:2, Informative)
Different disciplines, I know, but still. It would just seem like someone should be able to put something together that could overcome any obstacle and proceed in a straight line from point to point in the race. Like a Bradley tank, maybe with some modifications that exchange armor for nitrous tanks or something.
I realize that's not really the point of the race, but still. What about a ballistic vehicle instead? Like an egg drop that just has to hit the target, maybe with some means of propulsion to correct it's course in flight. It could complete the track in minutes instead of hours.
It just fails to amaze me that we are trying to get trucks to drive on their own when we have perfectly good rockets that can do the job much faster.
- Werner vB.
All Mac solution (Score:3, Informative)
More info (Score:3, Informative)
Good article about the Stanford and Cyberrider teams, with video.
Re:Arguably the worst name ever for a product... (Score:2, Informative)
"twa - reg" or "tour - eg" are both acceptable. It was named after a desert dwelling african tribe which is known for its versatility and ability to cope with harsh environments.
I personally liked the wind theme they had going on with Golf, Jetta & Corrado