Robot Road Warriors - $1 Million Race

Teams of scientists, engineers, and students from across the United States are gearing up for a very unique land race indeed. This race is a contest of unmanned vehicles, and the winner is the first vehicle to reach Las Vegas, winning $1 million dollars.

The Grand Challenge, the races formal name, is the product of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It sole purpose, to advance the technology behind unmanned vehicles in hopes that the military can adopt some of the concepts. 25 teams were selected out of 86 applicants including everyone from high school students to Carnegie Melon University.

I remember reading an article last year about this race, and the winner remarked on the original programming of the machine. The team built infra red and digital cameras into the vehicle and programmed it with features such as what a rock or a hill looks like. Obviously it taught the umv to dodge the rocks and trees. What the team saw in real world situation was that the machine was mistaking bushes for rocks and dodging everything.

They went back into the programming, adjusted the algorithm so the machine could learn what a rock or a bush looks like, and ended up winning the race at an average speed of 48 mph or so. The only time the vehicle was mistaken is when it had to cross a bridge. It had never seen water on either side of the road so it wasn’t sure what to do. It crossed the bridge at 3 mph! This race is simply amazing..

DARPA
will hold the race in two parts in early March. First, a qualifying
round will be held during the week of March 8 on the California
Speedway track in Fontana, California, where race vehicles are expected
to prove their autonomous driving and obstacle avoidance capabilities.
Those that survive the trials will then move on the big show, a race
from Barstow, California to Las Vegas, Nevada with no one in the
driver’s seat but an onboard computer.

The
cash prize will be awarded to the first vehicle to successfully
complete ththee course in 10 hours or less. If no entries meet that
deadline, future competitions will be held annually through 2007, DARPA
officials said.

“This is probably one of the best things I’ve done in my life,” said Alex Gutierrez, an associate team leader with Red Team, the Carnegie Mellon entry. “This whole thing has been wonderful.”

His
team, led by Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute professor William
“Red” Whittaker, converted an 1986 military surplus Humvee into
Sandstorm, a robot vehicle capable of driving itself at speeds in
excess of 45 miles (72 kilometers) per hour.