Reminder: The DARPA Car Race is on
The webcast doesn't seem to be working ( :-(( ), but I am trying to follow the action from various blog posts and it seems that 3 (of 11) robots have already dropped out. The Stanford vehicle (Junior) has completed phase (one of 3).
I envy people who can follow the race from the race course - this years challenge is Urban Navigation, following traffic rules etc.
I am vicariously following the race from Bangalore by reading blogs on the race (here is the latest post I could find http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9810371-1.html).
I thought others might be interested and hence the reminder. please vote down if inappropriate.
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Carnegie Mellon is the second to finish the challenge.
I think to this point there have only been 2 collisions, both involving Talos. They were relatively minor and clearly did not cause a DQ or cause any noticeable difference in behavior.
This is an impressive leap in technology from the Grand Challenge. At this point, I think that the remaining three are going to finish too.
It was interesting to watch because it was clear that the robot didn't know what to do to get around it. This was probably because it was at an intersection, so it was seeing the gate and the stop line. The bot had its turn signal on, so it new that it was at the intersection.
After watching the bots religiously adhere to traffic rules, it was an interesting comparison to watch the course officials speeding down the road to remove the obstacle.
Skynet (Cornell) is the final finisher.
That means that ale 6 that made it out of the 1st mission have completed the course. They'll still need to add up the points to figure out the actual winners.
More than half finished the challenge. I think that is pretty huge. I can't wait for better journalists than me to write about this. Robotics took a huge leap today.
One more thing before I shut up.
If you only watch a single video about this, look for where two bots are stopped at an intersection and are in a right-of-way situation.
Only 2 collisions that I'm aware of, and they were very minor.
Carnegie Mellon's computer-laden Chevy Tahoe wins the Urban Challenge and takes home the $2 million prize. http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19661/
Really amazing stuff.