“This year’s DARPA Grand Challenge robot race across the Mojave Desert had a much more successful ending than last year’s event: entrants actually completed the race,” Ed Oswald reports for BetaNews. “The contest was sponsored by the Department of Defense in an effort to investigate methods of further roboticizing the army and cut down on human casualties. Everyday consumer vehicles were outfitted with computers to completely automate the driving process.”
Oswald reports, “In 2004, none of the fifteen cars completed the race due to technical glitches, breakdowns or just plain bad luck, leaving the $1 million prize unclaimed. Thus, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) re-launched the contest and doubled the prize to $2 million. The result was five of 23 teams finishing the race with Stanford’s ‘Stanley,’ a robot controlled Volkswagen Toureg, finishing the 131.6 mile course in six hours, 53 minutes and 58 seconds. The car’s average speed was 19.1 mph.”
In July, we reported that Team Banzai was one of only 40 teams from around the country to advance by invitation to the national semi-finals of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. Team Banzai’s “Dora,” also a Volkswagen Touareg, was the world’s first fully-autonomous (no human driver and no remote control) vehicle driven by Apple Computer’s Mac OS X.
“Team Banzai went 1 for 4 during the regular rounds to qualify for the special fifth round on the last day. We had a near perfect run in the morning and just needed to finish the afternoon run to qualify for the Finals. Unfortunately, our over-conservative driving strategy caused Dora to think she was boxed in by a single traffic cone, thus ending her run for $2 million,” Team Banzai reports.
Full article here.
More info on Team Banzai’s site here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Vehicle drives itself (no human driver and no remote control) thanks to Apple’s Mac OS X – July 20, 2005
Still pretty cool, good to hear how it ended!
That sucks. At least they gave it a try though.
Amazing that they could do it at all. This was an application software challenge not so much a hardware or operating system challenge. What was truly mind blowing was the autonomous motorcycle entry. Google DARPA challenge to see some video clips of the motorcycle.
“Unfortunately, our over-conservative driving strategy caused Dora to think she was boxed in by a single traffic cone, thus ending her run for $2 million,” Team Banzai reports.”
Not the Beach Ball!!!??!!
Hate it when that happens…
MW: develop
How long was the qualifying track that Team Bonzai failed in — 7 miles?
Back to the drawing board…
Projects like this are the beginning of Skynet.
Skynet, I thought the same thing when i read about this. lol. I pictured all the skulls on the ground and all! lol