Carnegie Mellon wants to double its chances in the Grand Challenge 2 robotic boogaloo
By Peter Rojas 
posted February 12th 2005 8:29AM
posted February 12th 2005 8:29AM
So maybe things weren't quite so grand during last year's
Grand Challenge as they
could have been—none of the autonomous vehicles entered in DARPA's Cannonball Run-style robotic road race from Barstow,
CA, to Las Vegas came even close to crossing the finish line and grabbing the million dollar prize—but Carnegie
Mellon's Red Team, the outfit behind last year's top
performer has decided to double their chances next time around and are going to enter not one, but two driverless
Hummers in the Grand Challenge 2 which is all set to take place on October 8th.
Red Team's entrance videos sent to DARPA can be seen here:
http://media2.andrew.cmu.edu:81/nmvideo/RED_TEAM_TOO_H1GHLANDER_F107.mpeg
and here:
http://media2.andrew.cmu.edu:81/nmvideo/RED_TEAM_SANDSTORM_A117.mpeg
I'm definitely looking forward to their entries. It's a bit sad that with all the technology we have today, there were some cars having trouble getting off the starting line. Hopefully we'll see at least one fross the finish line.
I wouldn't say that its sad futurefeeder, the problem is fairly complex - especially for relative novices (there were many high school teams and individuals who had never built an autonomous robot before in the contest). The problem is also not an easy one to solve. It looks like it is until you actually have to build one. While I didn't participate in the contest, one of my research areas in school was autonomous robotics (of which CM is master IMO) and that's a tough nut to crack.