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Stanford team leaders Sebastian Thrun & Michael
Montemerlo celebrate Stanley's victory |
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Daylight dawns on the starting gates |
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Stanley speeds up at milepost 68 near Jean, Nevada |
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Carnegie-Mellon's H1ghlander roars out of a dust
cloud near the half-way point |
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Meanwhile, back at the media tent, reporters watch
Stanley navigate curves. |
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The three top finishers: Stanley, H1ghlander,
and Sandstorm |
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Primm, Nevada, was the site
of a truly historic road trip on Saturday, October 8th.
At about 2:30 p.m., "Stanley," a driverless VW Diesel
Touareg, crossed the finish line at the DARPA Grand Challenge
after successfully negotiating a 131.5-mile desert course
that looped around the Mojave Desert on both sides of Interstate
15 just south of Las Vegas. This was the second race sponsored
by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, offering
a $2 million prize to the autonomous vehicle that could finish
the course in ten hours or less. (The first Grand Challenge
was held in March, 2004 - click
here for the story.)
Twenty-three autonomous vehicles sponsored
by universities, businesses, and individuals left the
starting gates one by one as a spectacular dawn lit the sky
behind Buffalo Bill's Casino at the Nevada-California border.
They were embarking on a trek that would test their automotive
design, the accuracy of their sensing equipment, and the intelligence
of their software programs as they faced a number of off-highway
challenges. The course featured nine cattle guard crossings,
a steep bridge, three tunnels, straight runs across dry lake
beds, twisty mountain grades, deep sand, dirt, pavement, and
gravel roads, and a dangerous climb and descent over the 3,436-foot
Beer Bottle Pass. Increasing the challenges of the course
designed by the DARPA officials, Mother Nature added high
winds and dust devils to the mix.
Nearly all the robot racers traveled farther
than any of them were able to do in 2004, and five of
them completed the entire course. In order of arrival, the
bots who completed the trip were "Stanley" (sponsored
by Stanford University), "H1ghlander" and "Sandstorm"
(both sponsored by Carnegie-Mellon University), "KAT-5"
(sponsored by the Gray Insurance Company) and the six-wheel
drive mega-truck "TerraMax" (sponsored by the Oshkosh
Truck company). TerraMax spent the night alone near mile 98
and finished the course on Sunday, bringing the Grand Challenge
to a sixteen-ton end.
All the bots used a variety of GPS and inertial
navigation systems. Radar and laser sensing devices "painted"
complex 3-D maps of the topography through which they were
driving. Then complex algorithm software made decisions about
the speed, direction, and route that each would follow. As
a spectator, it was difficult to comprehend the programming
skill required to create software programs that could enable
the bots to navigate roads that would task fully-sighted human
drivers. One of the crowd favorites fell victim to a common
problem faced by thousands of off-highway enthusiasts each
year. A simple but fatal flat tire stopped "Dexter"
(Deployable EXtreme Terrain Enabled Robot) at mile 97 late
on Saturday.
As at the first DARPA event, an enthusiastic
crowd cheered each bot as it took off into the unknown with
only its artificial brain to guide it. In spite of mishaps
and computer failures, it's amazing that over 20% of the vehicles
completed the course, and all but two fared better that the
best performer at the last race. Autonomous vehicle technology
has come a long way in eighteen months.
Next week, RTA's robot analyst Mark
Helmlinger will provide an overview of what worked and
what didn't, and we'll have more pictures of the bots, their
creators, and the only road race in history to boast "No
Drivers -- No Problem."
Mark
Sedenquist
October 9, 2005
