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DARPA URBAN CHALLENGE ROBOTS SUCCEED

AP Insights by Jim Bennett and Roger Rohrs

November 5, 2007 

George AFB, Victorville, CA

DARPA is the central research and development organization of the Department of Defense that pursues high risk and payoff challenges. It provides dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions.  Their accomplishments include the Saturn V rocket that enabled moon landings, the Internet, the Stealth Fighter, the Predator and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles.  In this context, “History was made this weekend.”

The Challenge

Now, the Urban Challenge is the third in a series of competitions to encourage the rapid development of autonomous ground vehicle technology to save battlefield lives and conduct important missions.  This Challenge is also designed to inspired youth to pursue careers in science, technology and engineering.  Out of 35 semifinalists 11 teams were selected as finalists  

This weekend, autonomous robotic vehicles safely traveled a complex 60 mile course at the former George AFB in the high California desert without human drivers.  Safety, reliability, elapsed time and accuracy were stressed throughout this extremely challenging technological event.

Finalists were given 3 missions of 20 miles each to complete while adhering to California driving rules.  All 3 missions combined had to be completed in less than 6 hours.  They encountered a variety of road traffic both human driven and other finalists’ robotic vehicles.

 The event was carefully monitored using advanced communications, computers and evaluation criteria.  It required an intense personal oversight by the DARPA organizers to manage the event and ultimately select the winners from among the 11 finalists since years of work and effort had been invested by all.  The $3.5 million in prize money would most likely be reinvested in further improvements to the state of the art 2007 equipment. However, the greatest award would be to demonstrate and ultimately and dramatically expand the capabilities of autonomous travel everywhere through competition and collaboration among the best and brightness for the best ideas and solutions.

The Vehicles

All vehicles bristled with high tech equipment using cameras, radar, lasers, satellite navigation and computers.  Information gained from these systems controlled everything the vehicles would do and without any human involvement once the new mission information was fed into the vehicles at their starting gates. 

Size mattered from the huge Oshkosh TerraMax military truck (diesel powered with a turning radius less than a SUV) to a Toyota Prius that accelerated out of corners quickly.  Almost all vehicles demonstrated quick start times from the gates as if they were in a hurry to get on the road to show their stuff.  Capabilities of these driverless amazing vehicles we noted around the 2007 course was far superior to anything we had seen in 2004 and 2005.  Speeds up to 30 mph were common and barrier contact was an exception.  In the corners, we were mere feet away from the protective barriers and vehicles. We all felt very safe and impressed how well the vehicles were running the course.

DARPA’s Director Tony Tether indicated the weekend was very historic in that many efforts and talents of US and European universities and corporations work on significant technological challenges that have raised the profile of advanced robotics research globally.  The vehicles traveled the 60 mile course with approximately 50 human driven traffic vehicles.  Vehicles competing had to rely entirely on their onboard mission computers and “think” like human drivers while continually making split second decisions.  They faced driving challenges that included traffic circles, merges, four-way intersections, blocked roads, parking, passing slower vehicles and merging with traffic on two and four lane roads.

 The Results

The overall event winner was Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University’s General Motors Chevy Tahoe nicknamed “Boss”. The individuals comprising Tartan Racing team included Robotics Institute employees, other Carnegie Mellon departments and General Motors individuals.  The group received $2 million dollars, the appreciation and respect of the robotics community and perhaps a sense of satisfaction for winning the top spot on their third attempt. 

Second place was awarded to Stanford University’s VW Passat station wagon Junior and the very capable School of Engineering who won the 2005 $1 million prize.

Third place was $500,000 awarded to the Virginia Tech group.  Their Odin Ford Escape Hybrid wagon was developed by students and faculty coupled with an university autonomous spin off company called Torc Technologies.

Many of the other teams were happy for the winners and the significant advances made in the last two years.  They looked forward to competing in future events and starting careers in autonomous ground vehicle travel.  Several expressed support for the troops and the additional safety these vehicles would provide to those in harms way and peaceful applications

Dr Tether praised what everyone did in this round of competition and how impressive the vehicles performed in difficult traffic situations.  “This is absolutely fantastic.”

The demonstration of robotic vehicles able to perform safely in a dynamic urban environment represents a significant leap in technology advancement. You have a front row seat to a history making event.

In closing, having attended the two previous events, it was gratifying to see and talk to some of the thousands of people who attended and learned from this event.  The huge public tent looked like a gigantic press room equipped with huge jumbo live video screens, Ethernet, WiFi, Blogger equipment and etc. This is citizen participation at its best with global information streams going out around the world as history is being made.