2006 DARPA Grand Challenge teams announced, prize plummets to zero dollars
By Evan Blass 
posted October 4th 2006 5:20PM
posted October 4th 2006 5:20PM
If there's one event we look forward to even more than the annual Robocup competition, it's DARPA's Grand Challenge, where teams from academia and corporate America butt heads to see whose autonomous vehicle can complete a previously-unknown course in the shortest amount of time. Since the 2004 Challenge ended in utter disaster (no one even came close to finishing the entire course, and most competitors barely made it past the starting line), DARPA ran the same race in 2005 with much better results: several teams succeeded in crossing the finish line, with Stanford's VW Touareg leading the pack and taking home the two million dollar bounty. Well DARPA must have figured that it had a great source of cheap R&D at its disposal with these Challenges, so this year will see a total of two events -- one up Pike's Peak (already completed) and an urban version of the original scheduled for November 3rd. To that end, the so-called Team A participants for the Urban Challenge have just been announced (including most of the usual suspects) -- these groups will get up to $1 million in development funds before the race even begins -- while the unfunded (and therefore dark horse) Team B applicants will be revealed on October 18th. Although we doubt that most of these competitors are in it for the money, a recent Congressional ruling now prohibits DARPA from offering up cash prizes, so instead, the top three teams this year will all take home shiny new...trophies. Team B wanna-bes have up until the 13th to submit their applications, but now that you know there's no riches or funding involved, you really gotta have a love of the game to participate -- unless those trophies happen to be 24-karat gold and studded with diamonds, that is, in which case they should fetch even more on eBay than Team Buffalo's losing Yamaha ATV from 2005. [Warning: PDF link][Via GoRobotics]
No money... and research for government? I don't think so. Those group B guys would be better off selling the technology to private firms who could put it to some use.
Heh, maybe they should just give out 1 million worth of GOLD BARS as the trophy...wink wink nudge nudge DARPA!
the thing is, this is how they are going to sell that technology to private firms.
no one is going to buy untested technology, and this is as good a proving ground for it as you can find. (more-over, it is a recognized proving ground, being able to say "we came in 2nd in darpa's grand challenge" is quite valuble.
I'm a team leader for one of the Track B teams that is probably not going to be able to compete now. This actually is not due to the prize money being pulled rather the milestone bonuses - previous hand outs were to be 50 and 100 thousand & that's how we were going to fund our work. Very sad for engineering and science.
Awesome...Cornell made the list of Team A participants! First we conquered Robocup...Grand Challenge, here we come!
The Pike's Peak hill climb was NOT completed and has been rescheduled to 2007.
yes, and its NOT funded by DARPA. There is only ONE DARPA funded challenge this year.
What congressional ruling was recently passed that does not allow DARPA to hand out cash prizes? And who was the genius congressman that we can all write to in protest?
Gotta leave it to Congress to screw up and complicate everything.
Now that there's no cash, good luck DARPA.