Subject:
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rtlToronto 16: DARPA Eat Your Heart Out
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto
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Date:
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Fri, 12 Mar 2004 05:56:45 GMT
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Viewed:
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536 times
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Heya folks. De-lurking briefly 'cuz I've got something to say :)
I went out to Fontana today, to the California Speedway. DARPA was holding it's
Grand Challenge QID (qualifiers) there this week, and I went to watch the last
day (I think) of the quals.
(For those who aren't following it, the Grand Challenge was announced about a
year ago: build an autonomous robot ground vehicle to traverse a 200-mile desert
on- and offroad course from Barstow, CA to Primm, NV in ten hours or less.)
website: http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.htm
And you know what my most lasting impression was? "This is *just* like an rtl
event."
I kept looking for Calum & Chris in the control tower.
I'm serious though. 106 teams indicated interest, of which 86 were permitted to
compete. (rtl: 30 people indicate interest). 25 were picked to compete (rtl: 14
robots actually showed). 2 chose to disqualify themselves for not being ready
(rtl: couldn't get it working at ALL). From what I saw, 6 bots actually
traversed the test track successfully. Many others had partial success.
There were the startup problems: "Wait - pause the bot, we forgot to initialize
blah blah" Sound familiar?
Some robots failed to leave the chute at all.
Some robots left the chute - and immediately veered off course and were
disabled.
One memorable bot was edging more and more to the right (collecting cones as it
went). It got to the corrugated steel fence-with-gap... and plowed merrily
through. They paused it, but it seemed to be recovering and heading for the
centre of the course again. So they unpaused it - and it took an immediate
right-turn, and crashed head-on into the safety fence. ('Navigator' for those
who care)
There was even the Dave K entry - a 32,000 pound (15,000 kg, Iain) 6-wheeled
truck. As it was approaching the final barrier (where it was required to stop),
the crews all scattered just in case. ('TerraMax' if anyone's looking it up).
But ultimately, there was the same spirit as an rtl event. People scurrying to
do one last thing. People begging for someone else to go first. People
forgetting to set things up properly. People with the wrong 'program'. (they
were still using GPS coords from a test area - so the bot turned right and tried
to exit the arena) And people with some very, very cool bots.
I hate to say it, but a cheap laptop, DGPS card, Vision command and a couple of
custom sensors (ultrasonic ranging), and those really big wheels from the
Hailfire Droid, and we could have done better than about 18 of the teams. The
course really wasn't that tough. Of course, our batteries wouldn't make 200
miles, and it'd be more like 200 hours. But 1.3 mile course? The slowest
qualifer was 2.8 mph. The RC cars are faster than that. Hmmm.
Jeff
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: rtlToronto 16: DARPA Eat Your Heart Out
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| :) Jeff, I have been following this "glorified line following contest" and I am impressed by it. your play-by-play just gave me my morning smile. thank you. I want to go on and brag, but you said it best already! ---...---snip---...--- I hate to say (...) (21 years ago, 12-Mar-04, to lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto)
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