DARPA Grand Challenge Updates

Red Team writes "Today is the day. The official race route for the DARPA Grand Challenge was released to the first five teams at 4:00AM PST this morning. Our race planners are pouring over the race route getting ready for the launch. H1ghlander will start first at sunrise, around 6:15AM PST, followed by Stanford and then Sandstorm. For real-time updates on the race, you can track the Red Team race-day blog or catch the webcast on the official Grand Challenge page." Update: 10/08 20:57 GMT by Z : USSJoin writes "Stanford Racing, home of Stanley, has just finished the 131.2 mile DARPA Grand Challenge course. Considering that the CalTech Vehicle (Alice) jumped off the track toward onlookers only 8.3 miles in, this demolition derby-meets-AI demo has certainly been exciting."

Popular Science has most recent updates

[technoextreme]

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/darpachallenge/1b7a1e 7eef0d6010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html [popsci.com] Apparently, the teams all ready have traveled four times as far than last year. It is great progress for a year.

No webcast

[mpn14tech]

Unfortunately there is not a publicly accessible webcast of the race like last year. I was quite disappointed at that.
Still it is amazing how well the race is going this year. I hope there will be more races with greater challenges.

Re:Popular Science has most recent updates

[macklin01]

From [cnn.com]

It's one of two entries by Carnegie Mellon. The other, a modified red Humvee dubbed Sandstorm, took third position in the trials. It was the best performer in last year's race despite covering only 7 1/2 miles of the 150-mile course. The exact route of Saturday's race will be kept secret until two hours before start time, but organizers have said it will begin and end in Primm and is expected to be more difficult than last year while covering as many as 175 miles.

So, it's a bit shorter (by 18 miles), but expected to be more difficult. -- Paul

Re:Sensors sensors sensors

[mroch]

Did you read anything about this? The course is specifically designed to prevent teams from relying solely on GPS by making them go through tunnels where they will lose their signals. Many of the bots have cameras, lasers, radar, etc.

Re:Popular Science has most recent updates

[mroch]

Found it, on the Grand Challenge home page: "Kurjanowicz also said that the course 'is tough, tougher than last year,' but added: 'The vehicles are better, smarter. That's why we held the NQE [National Qualification Event],' he said. 'We wanted to make sure they are capable of completing the course."

Re:Live video feeds?

[mroch]

There is a webcast on campus here (Carnegie Mellon):

"A live Webcast of the Oct. 8 Grand Challenge through the Mojave Desert will be shown on campus in Breed Hall in Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall.

"The Webcast will begin at 9 a.m. and end at 6:30 p.m. Breakfast will be served from 9 to 11 a.m. and lunch from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m."

http://www.cmu.edu/cmnews/extra/050927_redteam.htm l [cmu.edu]

Lovely image!

[HerrGoober]

"Our race planners are pouring over the race route"

DARPA's site for status update, not team sites!

[vectorian798]

Here:
DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 [grandchallenge.org]

There is a map updated almost every minute automatically that will show you the position of all the teams and the times elapsed for each, etc. At the time of this post, Red Team Too, Stanford, and Read Team are all doing well, at 94+ miles each. Surprisingly, most of the teams are still in the running (that is, not eliminated). It is hard to compare one team to another however, because each team starts at a different time and perhaps the ones that are far behind are in the hardest part of the course and are thus moving slowly.

Re:We need a Google Maps Hacker

[aerodyno]

Here's an Excel spreadsheet that displays that data and automatically updates every minute (it's a start)

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~savraj/gc-live.xls [princeton.edu]

Re:DARPA's site for status update, not team sites!

[Maddog Batty]

There was a 10 mile error in the data from the start. Darpa corrected it which made it jump back as you noted. It is believed that the current data is more accurate read the thread here: https://dtsn.darpa.mil/grandc/forum/topic.asp?topi c_id=1652&forum_id=30&Topic_Title=Post+Time!&forum _title=Grand+Challenge+Event&M=False&S= [darpa.mil]

Re:We need a Google Maps Hacker

[vespazzari]

Here are the close up sattalite pictures from google maps of all the waypoints on the route information section of the darpa site.
Grand Challenge [grandchallenge.org]
2004 DEG Milestone, waypoint a [google.com]
Railroad overpass, waypoint b [google.com]
Lucy Gray Mountains, waypoint c [google.com]
Roach Lake, waypoint d [google.com]
Sheep Mountain, waypoint e [google.com]
Jean Lake, waypoint f [google.com]
Railroad underpass, waypoint g [google.com]
northern tunnel, waypoint h [google.com]
Southern tunnel, waypoint i [google.com]
jean, waypoint j [google.com]
Beer Bottle Pass, waypoint k [google.com]

Wikipedia Article

[KrackHouse]

I'm updating the Wikipedia page. Updates with links to videos plus google maps - add stuff if you've got it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_DARPA_Grand_Chal lenge [wikipedia.org]

Down to three teams, approaching 1000 foot drop

[Animats]

Ten miles to go, three entries (Stanford and both CMU vehicles) are close together, with Stanford well in the lead. Now approaching the section with the one-lane dirt road with the 1000 foot drop on one side. Is there a live video feed of this area anywhere?

Re:We need a Google Maps Hacker

[pooya]

Kinda late, but here it is. Map is working: http://www.pooyak.com/utils/dgc2005/ [pooyak.com]

Re:Popular Science has most recent updates

[Jay Carlson]

(MITRE is probably best known as "that contractor who decided that Windows NT should run that battleship that was stranded when Windows NT BSODed on its test run".)

Cite? MITRE [wikipedia.org] didn't exist when the final US battleship [wikipedia.org] was built, nor did MIT Lincoln Labs [wikipedia.org]. I suppose the MIT Radiation Laboratory [wikipedia.org] was contemporaneous in 1944, but I expect their expertise in OS recommendations was limited. I suppose this lack of knowledge of operating systems is excusable as there weren't any operating systems.

Oh, you mean the USS Yorktown [wikipedia.org]? That's a guided missile cruiser, and back in the old days the hull would have been called a destroyer, before the Navy decided to change the nomenclature. Little bit of a difference between a destroyer hull and a battleship, but hey, AC abuse is par for the course.

As much I relish the image of some poor ensign yelling, "Screen's blue, SIR!", nobody seems to think this was an OS-level crash. [ncl.ac.uk] And most of the google hits I can find on "navy smart ship mitre" point to things like Think Outside The COTS [mainframemigration.org]. Scrolling down to Figure 1, there's a list of potential pitfalls of commercial-off-the-shelf software.

If this seems familiar, you've been a slashdot reader for a few years: MITRE Corp. Report On Open Source In Government [slashdot.org].

Stanford racing team has won...

[Harry Balls]

...with their entry "Stanley", a modified VW Tuareg.

Total time: 7 hours, 8 minutes for a distance of 132 miles, which amounts to an average of 18.5 mph.

Re:Stanford racing team has won...

[Torrenc]

Err, no. They just finished with a time of 7h 28m. Maybe you mistoke the 125 mile line on the status board on http://www.grandchallenge.org/ [grandchallenge.org] for the finish?

Re:Stanford racing team has won...

[deblau]

Red Team Too is the closest to the finish line, but they're over Stanley's time. Red Team (One) is at Stanley's time now, and they're up in Beer Bottle Pass, 7 miles from the finish. I don't know about adding penalty time, but it looks like Stanley has won.

Re:Stanford racing team has won...

[Xerotope]

It's not so much an issue of adding penalty time, but subtracting pause time.

Both Stanford and Sandstorm have been paused several times to prevent them from running into the back of H1ghlander. It seems the roads are too narrow in most places to allow passing to occur, hence they stop the rear robot to allow a safe following distance to accumulate. The time the robot is in pause state does not seem to be taken into account in the unofficial results on the grandchallenge.org site.

Stanford and the two CMU teams have finished

[Animats]

Stanford is about half an hour ahead on time, so they win. (The numbers on the DARPA tracking site are wrong; the clocks are still running for the teams that have finished.) Insight Racing, TerraMax, and the Grey team are still running, but they're not even half way and can't finish within ten hours.

So it's over.

Autonomous vehicles will never be a joke again.

Re:CMU Red Team wins!

[Anonymous Coward]

WRONG. Read parent posts before posting. You were obviously not that glued to the screen otherwise you would have noticed the clocks continuing despite Stanford finishing over half an hour ago. They also must account for various pause times, so although nothing is official, Stanford probably still won.

Note On DARPA Times

[Anonymous Coward]

Just thought I would mention a bit about the "Live update" times on the DARPA Grand Challenge Site since everyone keeps referencing them and they haven't been worth a damn all day:

1 - The timers were started ~20 minutes before the bots took off for at least Red Team Too, Stanford & Red Team and never reset.
2 - The bots were sent out at 5 minute intervals in this order H1ghlander; Stanley; Sandstorm, but Sandstorms time as only been 2 minutes off Stanley's all day, hmmmm.
3 - As someone mentioned the official clock for each bot is stopped if it is ever paused by the chase truck but it is clear that since the clock for each of the current finishers is not stopped YET, that the "live update" times are not linked to this official timer.

So, unless someone is posting from Primm or DARPA has posted official finish time since I started this post we all should just sit tight till those times are out.

Although, since Stanley started second and finished first he is most likely the winner (no, I'm not from Stanford; actually from CMU).

Kudos to all those that competed and Congrats to those that finished!!

Re:Popular Science has most recent updates

[some2]

I was there.... just got back home. Most said the course was as challenging but less difficult to pass. On this course, the first stretch was a run over a dried lake bed to Jean, NV from Primm. Basically, if your vehicle was road worthy you should pass back to the start/finish point for a quick photo op. That was around the first 8 miles of the course. I saw one bot (think it was terramax) get locked up trying to go up the railroad overpass (B), but most bots handled that well. Most everything else was fairly out of view, so it's hard to say. The hard part was the Beer Bottle Pass (K). A few teams were complaining that their heavily ruggedized vehicles were not being fairly treated because the course was made so easily passable. More agile vehicles had an advantage in that they could get up to speed faster. There were no large boulders, trees, etc in the way of the bots, as they were supposed to stay primarily on the predefined trails. The GPS tracking had around 1000 waypoints according to several different members of a few of the teams. The Stanford bot "won" in a sense as they were the first across the line. The red bull ice containers were poured on their coach and the media was interviewing their team. The CMU/Red Team groups appeared pretty sad after the initial results came in, but the Red Team Too bot may have beaten Stanford.. we'll see. The way they are scoring this is painful because they constantly paused the bots in movement to allow for sufficient space between. The exception may have been when stanford's bot passed CMU's 'highlander' bot.

Re:Racing against the clock

[AxsDeny]

Their plans are surely similar. The guy heading up the Stanford team is a former student of Red Whittaker and was on the Red Team last year.