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Perhaps these guys need to talk to some of the teams from the Grand Challenge. Their solution seems a little hokey. A simple LIDAR and SONAR solution should do the job. Throw in a preloaded map of the facility as reference and this robot should be off and running. |
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In line with the theme of the DARPA Grand Challenge, here are the Robolympics. |
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Steve Wozniak attended the race with the Red Team. I got a quick photo of him on his Segway. I later got to meet him and shake his hand.
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This photo has got to make you think about man becoming slaves to the machines. This was quite humorous.
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Highly favored to win the race, the Red Team made their appearance in Primm late in the evening. Amazingly, their vehicle did drive into the lot after an engine fire on the course. One of my colleagues got a short video of the vehicle driving in.
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Team TerraMax had the most awesome vehicle on the course, weighing in at approximately three tons. Oshkosh is the maker of the vehicle and was the corporate sponsor. Amazingly, this is the smallest vehicle they make. There are some 2,600 of these types of vehicles in the field with the US Army and Marines today. It was obvious why the Army and Marines wanted Oshkosh in the race; to determine if they could retro fix existing inventory to become autonomous. One of the most amazing facts about this vehicle is that it had seven multiprocessor Pentium servers on board that could not process navigational data fast enough. How could this be when all of the other vehicles didn’t even have the physical space on board to house computing power like this? My guess is that TerraMax was using a deterministic approach to navigation, taking into account a lot more data points given its size, and had a lot more sensors than the other vehicles. Check out my interview with the Oshkosh project lead, Don Verhoff, at IT Conversations.
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The Cajunbot was a very cool little vehicle. It was one of the only vehicles with a deterministic navigation system. Deterministic in that it used maps in addition to GPS, lidar, and sonar to help it steer itself. You can catch my interview with Scott Wilson of Team Cajunbot at IT Conversations. The team was serving crawfish gumbo in their tent, which was absolutely amazing. (Yes, that is my shadow. I'm still learning.)
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A.I. Motorvators had the most awesome external design of all of the vehicles in the race. You can catch my interview with CJ Pederson from A.I. Motorvators at IT Conversations.
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Cyberrider was probably one of the best designed vehicles to enter the race. This team had quite the following. You can check out the team’s web site here. I wish I had interviewed them. Their vehicle looked like it had a ton of interesting features. Jim Nista from Team Cyberrider did call into the IT Conversations studio for an interview.
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This vehicle was quite interesting. Check out the interview I did with Brian Mee of Team ENSCO at IT Conversations.
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This vehicle was built by Palos Verdes High School. They did actually qualify and race, but no one from the team hung around to chat with the press and spectators. I’ve got to believe that one of the student’s parents must have donated the vehicle.
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I didn’t get a chance to talk to the Virginia Tech team, but here is a photo of their vehicle. They didn’t qualify for the race either.
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This was one of the most unique vehicles in the lot. Team LADIBUG didn’t qualify for the race, but it had some very interesting features including "wings" to assist with stabilization and a roll detection system for deploying the "wings." Check out the interview I did with Warren Williams of Team Phantasm at IT Conversations.
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SRA International had set up satellite tracking of the race. They had projected this on a movie screen in the arena. This would have been very cool if the race had gone beyond seven miles. You can see all of the participants clustered at the starting line.
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Okay, so I am finally getting around to processing my photos. This one is of the welcome sign at the press booth. We got there rather early compared to other media folks. The rest of the media corps arrived around 3pm, including CNN, NBC, and Reuters.
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I will get around to all of my follow up from the DARPA Grand Challenge this weekend. I have emails to get out and photos to process and post. Sorry for the delay, but I've been traveling since being at the Grand Challenge. |
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Doug interviewed me at the end of the day. There were a number of common themes throughout the day. Every single team was very excited to be there, regardless of their race status. Every team is committed to returning for the next race. Well, so are we. Every team that I interviewed today is committed to staying together. All of them invited me to track their evolution over the course of the next year. I will, along with all of the other teams that I didn’t interview.
One thing that was interesting about the make up of the competitive field is that each team’s vehicle possessed features and capabilities in which DARPA is very interested. When these features and capabilities are combined they paint a very interesting picture of one heck of a capable autonomous vehicle. I will spend some time over the next couple of days combing through my notes to pull a good set of these features and capabilities together.
I have a ton of pictures from today that I need to process and post, including a picture of Steve Wozniak on a Segway. That’s right; Woz was at the Grand Challenge. I even got to meet him. It was one of those moments that totally takes you by surprise and you freeze the instant you realize its magnitude. What a waste. I also have a ton of follow up emails to get out to the team leaders I spoke with and others. Colleagues that I was in Primm with will be getting me some of their content from the event, including short video clips and interesting pictures.
I am looking forward to the next event. I learned a lot today about getting key interviews, organizing coverage for an event, and structuring the webcast. I sincerely enjoyed working with Doug and look forward to doing this again. What should we cover next? Drop me a comment with a suggestion. |
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Since last posting the event is long over. However, immediately after my last post I headed out to the parking lot to see who I could grab for interviews. Over the course of the ensuing couple of hours I secured four interviews with A.I. Motorvators, Team ENSCO, Team Cajunbot, and Team TerraMax. All of these interviews were broadcast live and will be available for download from IT Conversations shortly. |
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Doug and I had a chance to interview Warren Williams from Team Phantasm. Their vehicle was designed like a ladybug; in fact its name is Ladibug (Long-range Autonomous Directional Intuitive, Boundary Sending Unmanned Ground Vehicle). The one item that we didn't discuss in the interview that was impressive was that Ladibug was "swarm" enabled. Warren was explaining to the crowd that Ladibug could detect other "swarm" enabled vehicle and communicate with them to assist in force coordination on a battlefield. This was very interesting stuff. I'll see if I can follow up with Warren on what this "swarm" technology is. |
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Doug is reporting more and more emails coming in with questions. I'm off to track down some DARPA personnel and interview some of the teams. |
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Radio is having troubles starting up over my dial-up connection. I've got to get to MoveableType if I am going to do this again. However, using Radio is a far sight better than what the professional journalists have to deal with from the field here in Primm. |
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There are seven teams in from the field so far. All teams are assembling in the parking lot behind Buffalo Bill's Casino in Primm. |
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We are seriously constrained by connectivity here in Primm. There is no high-speed access even for press. The phone lines don't even allow long distance calls. They only way I am able to blog is to use my ISP's 800 number, which is costing me. I've had to help reporters from a bunch of agencies get connected and file their reports from the field. It's kind of funny that an independent blogger has more resources at his finger tips in the field than professional journalists. |
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Doug is broadcasting our coverge from Primm. He has reached a few hundred listeners with the web cast and received a few dozen complementary email for the coverage. Apparently we have put together the most comprehensive coverage the event so far, even with CNN and NBC covering the event. |
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The rest of the afternoon will be spent waiting. The vast majority of the press have not yet arrived. The official press briefing is at 1800 PST. I guess I'll just have to go and spend some money at the craps and blackjack tables. |
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As of now, all teams have either been disabled or withdrawn from the race. The farthest any single team has penetrated the course is seven miles of the 142 mile course. The top three teams are Red Team from CMU (7 miles), SciAutonics II (7 miles), and Team Dad (6 miles). The only other teams to get off the starting line were SciAutonics, Team TerraMax, The Golem Group, and Team Caltech. All of the remaining teams never got off of the starting line: Virginia Tech, CIMAR, Palos Verdes RoadWarriors, Team TeraHawk, The Blue Team, Axion Racing, Team CajunBot, Team ENSCO. The Blue Team and Team TerraHawk have officially withdrawn from the race. |
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While registering for media passes in the back parking lot, I over heard a US Army Major explaining to his boss, a Colonel, what had gone wrong with a number of team. His explaination was that there were a "bunch of smart guys" working in the teams but none had real world experience and this was their first time racing like this. |
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We arrived in Primm this morning at 11:30am PST to a quiet arena. We had received various updates via mobile phone regarding the status of the race from colleagues at the starting line and at various point on the course. The latest update upon our arrival was that The Golem Group was in the lead. |
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I'm leaving my hotel now for the four hour journey to Primm, Nevada. I'll hopefully be able to compose some posts on the way, but connectivity between here and there is non-existent. See you in Primm! |
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I've created a new category for those of you who just want to see posts from the race today. The DAPRA Grand Challenge category can be found here and the category RSS 2.0 feed here. |
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Coverage of the DARPA Grand Challenge is going to be streamed live over the Internet through IT Conversations, thanks to Doug Kaye. I'll be covering the finish line out in Primm, Nevada. A few others will be covering the starting line and the teams. We have pulled this together very quickly. It should be very interesting to see how this ad hoc coverage of this sporting event turns out. Who knows, this might be the start of a new sports column on IT Conversations.
CNN has an article on the race today.
You can listen the coverage all day here. |
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I’ll be in Primm, Nevada, tomorrow blogging from the finish line of the DARPA Grand Challenge. I hope to publish pictures, articles, and posts in between playing craps and blackjack at Buffalo Bill’s. Some interesting news has been coming in on Slashdot about the race. Here are some of the articles:
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