Reminder: The DARPA Car Race is on | Hacker News Reader

Reminder: The DARPA Car Race is on

19 pointsplinkplonk14 comments

The webcast doesn't seem to be working ( :-(( ), but I am trying to follow the action from various blog posts and it seems that 3 (of 11) robots have already dropped out. The Stanford vehicle (Junior) has completed phase (one of 3).

I envy people who can follow the race from the race course - this years challenge is Urban Navigation, following traffic rules etc.

I am vicariously following the race from Bangalore by reading blogs on the race (here is the latest post I could find http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9810371-1.html).

 I thought others might be interested and hence the reminder. please vote down if inappropriate.

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Stanford is the first to finish the challenge. They won't know who the winner is until the points are tallied.

Carnegie Mellon is the second to finish the challenge.

CMU wins on points but they won't say what points. http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/422997...

If they don't reveal the judging criteria, how are the teams supposed to improve?

Virginia Tech just pulled in to be the third team to complete the challenge.

The next team has 4 more submissions to complete, so it is going to take a little more. Current order is Little Ben (Ben Franklin), Talos (MIT), Skynet (Cornell).

I think to this point there have only been 2 collisions, both involving Talos. They were relatively minor and clearly did not cause a DQ or cause any noticeable difference in behavior.

This is an impressive leap in technology from the Grand Challenge. At this point, I think that the remaining three are going to finish too.

Interestingly, MIT just got snagged by a gate that had swung open. It was a very thin gate, like a triangle of pipes. It had been blown open in the wind.

It was interesting to watch because it was clear that the robot didn't know what to do to get around it. This was probably because it was at an intersection, so it was seeing the gate and the stop line. The bot had its turn signal on, so it new that it was at the intersection.

After watching the bots religiously adhere to traffic rules, it was an interesting comparison to watch the course officials speeding down the road to remove the obstacle.

Go Hokies! (VT CS '05)

MIT just finished, that makes it the 5th to complete.

Skynet (Cornell) is the final finisher.

That means that ale 6 that made it out of the 1st mission have completed the course. They'll still need to add up the points to figure out the actual winners.

More than half finished the challenge. I think that is pretty huge. I can't wait for better journalists than me to write about this. Robotics took a huge leap today.

Sorry...

One more thing before I shut up.

If you only watch a single video about this, look for where two bots are stopped at an intersection and are in a right-of-way situation.

Only 2 collisions that I'm aware of, and they were very minor.

Champion Robot Car Declared

Carnegie Mellon's computer-laden Chevy Tahoe wins the Urban Challenge and takes home the $2 million prize. http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19661/

Six teams finished, looks like it will be a close call. http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/422974... - Popular Mechanics live blog