---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 19:26:42 -0800
From: Alex Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [SeattleRobotics] DARPA news flash!
Hi,
Just got back from spectating at the first day of DARPA Grand Challenge
qualifying.
25 entries had been approved and I was pretty surprised to see that over 20
seemed to have actually built a car and showed up for qualifying. Everything
from a 250 pound motorcycle (REALLY!) to a 32,000 pound behemoth.
The first 10 vehicles were scheduled to run their qualifying demo today.
The course was about a 1 mile run requiring navigation to 54 GPS waypoints
guiding the car through narrow 20 to 50 foot wide corridors thru various
hazards: a 6 inch full width bump, a level gravel pit about 30 feet long,
several parked cars to avoid, and a number of narrow gaps to fit through.
Six cars showed up at the start line to make an attempt (I don't know if
anymore of the first 10 were actually there, or what). Of those 6, the U of
Louisiana entry, the U of Florida entry, the DAD entry and the Golem entry
failed to get started (they had a half hour window to make their run). Don't
know what the problem was, This was the first time that the DARPA people were
responsible for getting the cars started....maybe there was just a problem
there.
The CalTech entry, "BOB", made the best almost successful run of the day.
They ran about 1/2 of the course. successfully passing through the lanes, over
the bump, through all but one narrow gap (which the car chose to drive around
the outside edge of..out of bounds). Then after passing through a final narrow
gap between two bridge supports, the car made an abrupt right turn and was
rumoured to have been stopped intentionally before running into a wall.
The only other team to make it off the line was the Palos Verdes High
School team. Their car left the start line and headed for the first corridor.
It hit the first cone on the right side of the corridor and continued to drift
slowly to the right toward a concrete abuttment. The team appeared to command
the car to stop a couple feet from the wall; it stopped anyway. But, a minute
or so later, it lurched forward and hit the wall a glancing blow and came to a
stop again. Didn't appear to damage the car very significantly.
Each car will get two chances to qualify. Today's cars will get another
chance on Wednesday. The remaining cars, including CMU's entry (which flipped
last Friday but they got it running again) will have Tuesday and Thursday to
qualify.
Amazing as it is to watch an unmanned car find its way most of the way
around an obstacle course; waiting 4 hours to see two runs is a little like
watching paint dry (and in a 90 degree plus sun). So, I won't be going out
for the next few days. If anyone goes, please let us know what happened.
I probably will go out for the start in Barstow on Saturday at 6:30 am.
There will probably be a few cars that manage to qualify.
Alex
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Visit the SRS Website at http://www.seattlerobotics.org
Yahoo! Groups Links
Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
Biofuels list archives:
http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/
Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address.
To unsubscribe, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
