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Autonomous vehicles navigate a tunnel at the California
Motor Speedway. |
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Size could matter: Team TerraMax from Oshkosh,
Wisconsin |
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One of the more unusual competitors, an autonomous
motorcycle |
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Currently number 1: Stanford Racing poses with
"Roadrunner" |
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"Tommy," a gas-powered, custom-built
dune buggy from Charlottesville, Virginia |
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The Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) operates under the auspices of
the United States Department of Defense. Last March, DARPA
sponsored an event called the Grand
Challenge, which was held to accelerate the development
of autonomous vehicle technologies for use in battlefield
situations. To succeed in the Grand Challenge, autonomous
vehicles must be able to navigate a 175-mile desert topography
course in under ten hours with no assistance of any kind from
their human engineers.
This year, the vehicles
range from modified dune buggies, motorcycles, four- and
six-wheel drive trucks, golf carts, ATVs, and SUVs to some
custom designs that fall outside all ordinary automotive categories.
The robotic vehicles are fed GPS coordinates a couple of hours
before they are launched. They then have to be able to use
these coordinates in conjunction with on-board sensory equipment
to make decisions about how fast to drive, which route to
choose, and how to avoid obstacles. The GPS coordinates plot
a top-secret course that will force the vehicles to enter
tunnels, travel through mud, climb steep hills, and navigate
around other natural and physical barriers.
For this year's Grand Challenge, development
teams from twenty-six states completed 79 applications last
October. In June, forty teams qualified as semi-finalists,
and in July, nine teams were identified as alternate semi-finalists.
In August, that alternate field was reduced to three, so that
a total of 43 teams traveled to the California Speedway in
Fontana to participate in the weeklong National Qualifying
Event (NQE) beginning on September 27th.
At the NQE, the vehicles had to autonomously
navigate a challenging three-mile course that included a tunnel,
zig-zags around power poles, a stretch of rough road, 90-degree
turns, steep hills, and a speed run down the infield of the
Speedway. At the conclusion of the NQE, a total of twenty
teams will travel to Primm, Nevada, for the start of the 2005
Grand Challenge at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 8th. The
teams will leave the launching area at timed intervals and
will be followed by chase vehicles driven by professional
off-road drivers. Provided by SCORE International Off-Road
Racing, the skilled drivers help ensure public safety as these
unmanned vehicles careen off into the desert.
Spectators are welcome at both the NQE
and the Grand Challenge. Large video screens will be set up
at the launch area in Primm (forty miles south of Las Vegas
at the California state line) to follow the progress of the
race. More information about the course and the
competing teams is available on the Grand
Challenge Web site.
RoadTrip America reporters and analysts
have been attending the NQE and will also attend the Grand
Challenge. We'll be providing information about the race and
some of the participants over the next couple of weeks. As
of October 1st at 5:00 p.m., the top ten teams at NQE (those
that had completed the course in the fastest time and cleared
the most obstacles) were: Stanford Racing, Team Cornell, Desert
Buckeyes, Princeton, Mojavation, Red Team Too, Red Team, CIMAR,
Team TerraMax, and Intelligent Vehicle Safety Technologies
I.
Mark
Helmlinger, RTA's Grand Challenge analyst,
has designed robotic vehicles for NASA and is currently building
radiometric sensing equipment for Northrop Grumman. He has
"handicapped the field" and chosen the following
teams as his "Picks" to win this year's event:
- Red Team Too and the "H1ghlander"
because of the extensive desert testing they have
completed to date
- Golem Group and the "Golem
2" because their whole computer control is a
laptop
- Team DAD and "DAD
Are We There Yet?" because of their unique sensor
and control electronics
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Mark
Sedenquist
October 2, 2005
