Patrick's Robot Race Memories
By Patrick Norton - Posted Mar 29, 2004
Fresh from the folks who brought you the Internet comes a robotic race in the desert! The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) first Grand Challenge took place March 13, 2004. The point? DARPA wants a third of military vehicles to work autonomously and require no human drivers by 2015. They pretty much want to take American lives a bit further out of harm's way. On today's "Screen Savers," take a look at the pics and video I brought home from the race.
By now you probably know that none of the entries in the Grand Challenge conquered the 140 odd miles of Mojave trails from the SlashX Cafe in Barstow, Calif., to Primm, Nev. The $1 million cash prize will be offered again for a similar challenge in 2005 or 2006. Until then, rights for building the first system that can navigate and drive a complicated real world off-road course without human input (at least after the initial GPS waypoints get loaded) are still up for grabs. That doesn't mean the groups that managed to finish even a few miles of the course haven't already won some lucrative contracts. We'll talk about those on Wednesday.
No. 22, Team Red
With bead lock rims and BF Goodrich Baja T/A off-road racing tires, Team Red came well-prepped. Watch the testing video if you don't believe me. The bright red, highly modified Hummer of Team Red also ended the race in a fairly spectacular location: mile 7.4, a half mile farther than any other entry, and stuck on a switchback on a mountain trail, front wheels spinning fast enough take the treds off the tires.
From Team Red's March 21 race log:
...after clipping a fencepost (front left), Sandstorm started tracking left which might indicate steering damage. Sandstorm later hit a 3-foot boulder (front left) which sent it airborne, but Sandstorm kept going. After making the tight turn at "Sandstorm's Hairpin" it veered left, edged the left slope with its outside wheels, nosed into a large rock (hitherto "Sandstorm's Rock"- more later) and plowed to a stop. It dug in with only the front wheels spinning...The engine was still running when DARPA shut Sandstorm down.
No. 21, SciAutonics II
SciAutonics II might well look like a glorified golf cart, but the SciAutonics entry built on an Israeli Tomcar buggy made it to mile 6.7, the second longest run of the Grand Challenge. GPS drift, based on losing most of its GPS sat connections, left it going wide on a turn. You can't drive through a mountain, and after repeated efforts, No. 21 was shut down.
No. 9, The Gollum Group
The lesser-known team from Cal Tech, The Gollum Group, did pretty well, ending at 5.2 miles on the course. I was impressed, considering that during the trial run, the team took a strong right turn out of the gate (definitely off course), heading straight for me and the video camera I was holding. There's nothing quite like the site of a giant primer black Ford pickup heading straight for you, no matter how slow. And that's before you start to think about the lack of a driver behind the wheel. Whatever didn't work during the trial run worked fine during the race until Team Gollum's throttle control gave out, and the vehicle stopped moving forward.
No. 07, Team DAD
Team Digital Auto Drive, aka Team DAD, brought to you by the brothers responsible for Velodyne subwoofers (excellent subs, by the way) went for simplicity. Now, custom code in Assembly and a selection of 1-GHz Texas Instruments Digital Signal Processors might not sound simple, until you realize that all of DAD's nav equipment fit in the little gray box on top of the Toyota Tundra. The entire passenger compartment was still usable.
DAD managed a great run, traveling 6.0 miles, where it got stuck on a rock after pausing to let a rescue vehicle go by (presumably to tow Team Red off the course). I figured them for potential front-runners 'cause they were one of the only teams that had built a means of cleaning the glass in front of their main sensors. Next time they'll probably have a subroutine coded to try a bit more throttle if the truck gets stuck. Apparently once a human got behind the wheel, the Tundra rolled right off the rock it was stuck on.
Now, if only we had pictures of where they ended up.
By now you probably know that none of the entries in the Grand Challenge conquered the 140 odd miles of Mojave trails from the SlashX Cafe in Barstow, Calif., to Primm, Nev. The $1 million cash prize will be offered again for a similar challenge in 2005 or 2006. Until then, rights for building the first system that can navigate and drive a complicated real world off-road course without human input (at least after the initial GPS waypoints get loaded) are still up for grabs. That doesn't mean the groups that managed to finish even a few miles of the course haven't already won some lucrative contracts. We'll talk about those on Wednesday.
With bead lock rims and BF Goodrich Baja T/A off-road racing tires, Team Red came well-prepped. Watch the testing video if you don't believe me. The bright red, highly modified Hummer of Team Red also ended the race in a fairly spectacular location: mile 7.4, a half mile farther than any other entry, and stuck on a switchback on a mountain trail, front wheels spinning fast enough take the treds off the tires.
From Team Red's March 21 race log:
...after clipping a fencepost (front left), Sandstorm started tracking left which might indicate steering damage. Sandstorm later hit a 3-foot boulder (front left) which sent it airborne, but Sandstorm kept going. After making the tight turn at "Sandstorm's Hairpin" it veered left, edged the left slope with its outside wheels, nosed into a large rock (hitherto "Sandstorm's Rock"- more later) and plowed to a stop. It dug in with only the front wheels spinning...The engine was still running when DARPA shut Sandstorm down.
SciAutonics II might well look like a glorified golf cart, but the SciAutonics entry built on an Israeli Tomcar buggy made it to mile 6.7, the second longest run of the Grand Challenge. GPS drift, based on losing most of its GPS sat connections, left it going wide on a turn. You can't drive through a mountain, and after repeated efforts, No. 21 was shut down.
The lesser-known team from Cal Tech, The Gollum Group, did pretty well, ending at 5.2 miles on the course. I was impressed, considering that during the trial run, the team took a strong right turn out of the gate (definitely off course), heading straight for me and the video camera I was holding. There's nothing quite like the site of a giant primer black Ford pickup heading straight for you, no matter how slow. And that's before you start to think about the lack of a driver behind the wheel. Whatever didn't work during the trial run worked fine during the race until Team Gollum's throttle control gave out, and the vehicle stopped moving forward.
Team Digital Auto Drive, aka Team DAD, brought to you by the brothers responsible for Velodyne subwoofers (excellent subs, by the way) went for simplicity. Now, custom code in Assembly and a selection of 1-GHz Texas Instruments Digital Signal Processors might not sound simple, until you realize that all of DAD's nav equipment fit in the little gray box on top of the Toyota Tundra. The entire passenger compartment was still usable.
DAD managed a great run, traveling 6.0 miles, where it got stuck on a rock after pausing to let a rescue vehicle go by (presumably to tow Team Red off the course). I figured them for potential front-runners 'cause they were one of the only teams that had built a means of cleaning the glass in front of their main sensors. Next time they'll probably have a subroutine coded to try a bit more throttle if the truck gets stuck. Apparently once a human got behind the wheel, the Tundra rolled right off the rock it was stuck on.
Now, if only we had pictures of where they ended up.
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