Robots win!
Three robotic racers completed the 150 mile DARPA Grand Challenge race on Saturday, a huge advance from last year's
race, when every competitor failed within sight of the start line. Two more robot vehicles remained in the race
Saturday night, waiting until daylight to resume their run.
First across the line was Stanford University's VW Touareg, "Stanley," which overtook the Carnegie-Mellon University's
Humvee "H1ghlander" 102 miles into the race. Third to finish was Carnegie-Mellon's "Sandstorm."
The elapsed-time winner can't be declared until all racers have finished their run. Stanley covered the course in a
little over 7 hours.
Through the Grand Challenge, DARPA aims to stimulate the technology development needed for the U.S. military to meet a
congressional mandate for a third of its vehicles to be unmanned by 2015.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Matt 10:50PM (12/18/2005)
Actually, four robots finished, but who cares. This is journalism, not fact reporting.
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Edsel 10:50PM (12/18/2005)
This is really an unbelievable accomplishment; congratulations to the winners and a big "tip of the hat" to the other teams.
So...when will I be able to send my car out to get the dry cleaning?
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avixe 10:50PM (12/18/2005)
Updates: Stanford won with the lowest elapsed time. CMU took second and third. Fourth place went to Gray Team, driving a Ford Escape hybrid. And there's another finisher, TerraMax, but it doesn't place because it took more than ten hours to run the course.
See http://www.grandchallenge.org .
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starlightmica 10:50PM (12/18/2005)
Underpinnings of the 5 finishers:
1. Stanley (Stanford) - VW Touareg R5 TDI (5-cylinder)
2. Sandstorm (CMU) - 1986 HMMV
3. H1lander (CMU) - 1999 Hummer H1
4. GreyBot (Grey Team) - Ford Escape Hybrid (damn!)
5. Terramax (Oshkosh Vehicle) - a 6-wheeled, 16 ton military truck prototype (http://www.terramax.com/)
Great publicity for all involved - I'm impressed a hybrid soft-roader placed 4th!
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Stuart Waterman 10:50PM (12/18/2005)
Matt, When I wrote the article, it was reported that 3 had finished (follow the post's "read" link to the source information). Articles often are posted a while after they're written, so we are sometimes overtaken by events. It was certainly not my intent to downplay the achievements of either the Grey Team or the TerraMax team.
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