2005 DARPA Grand Challenge Has a Winner! |
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Cornell University robot vehicle out early Primm, NV - The 2005 Defense Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) Grand Challenge, a 131-mile course in the Mojave Desert, has been won in 6-hours, 53-minutes by Stanford University's autonomous ground vehicle carrying the name of Stanley. The race was held Saturday, Oct. 8, but the results were not declared official until Sunday. Racing a robot vehicle called, Spider, Team Cornell University, all undergraduate students, conducted their entire autonomous vehicle testing at Mojave Airport from early July until they headed for Fontana at the end of Sept. for the second round of qualifications, where they finished fifth overall out of 43 teams. Their standing was very impressive, since many of the other teams had the money to hire professional engineers for the length of one year to ensure top positions. Cornell was among 23 finalists in the final race, but was paused by a DARPA chase vehicle at approximately the nine mile mark because "Spider" made a controlled sharp turn and apparently the chase crew thought it was out of control. Computer Science major Isaac Miller said, "The race began, and everything behaved as it usually does. We lost high precision differential corrections in GPS early on, but the position estimator handles that just fine. Long about mile 9 we reacquired the differential service, and the position estimator started to re-converge to the high precision solution. The car swerves back and forth by 2 or 3 feet while reacquiring the high precision solution and it obtains a precise solution after about 5 seconds. The problem is that DARPA paused us after only 2 seconds. Their pause disabled AI, centered the steering wheel, and caused the car to coast into a wall at 1 mph. Without reverse, we were finished." Isaac and Team Cornell were understandably disappointed and immediately started wondering, "Would Spider have finished the race if it hadn't been paused?" Miller said, "I don't know. I do know that it would've gone a lot farther though, and it would've been far more satisfying to see it fail for a more logical reason." Miller concluded, "In comparing notes with other teams, we have a very unique solution, quite unlike any other. One of the chief scientists at Applanix (makers of the $60,000+ high end position and attitude estimator) was absolutely astonished to discover that our homemade attitude/position estimator was just as accurate as their commercial unit. DARPA was also impressed that we developed so much of the solution with our bare hands- nothing was contracted out, and there were no hired professionals on our team. And regardless, we'll be submitting one or more journal papers on the solution within half a year, so perhaps others will be able to admire it for what it is." Businesses
at Mojave Airport were proud to sponsor such a dedicated team of students
from Cornell University for the DARPA Grand Challenge and will gladly
welcome them back to Mojave anytime. Sponsors included: XCOR Aerospace;
Cathy and Al Hansen; Mellor Printing; Fiberset; and Panel Light. |