2005 DARPA Grand Challenge

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The 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, a race between autonomous robots, was held on October 8 and 9th 2005 in the Mojave Desert along a route of 212.4 km (132.2 miles). The race was a follow-up to the DARPA Grand Challenge held in 2004. DARPA promised a $2 million prize for the builders of the robot that completed the course fastest (if under ten hours). This prize was double that of the 2004 Grand Challenge, which no vehicle completed.

1 National Qualification Event (NQE)
2 Race
3 Race Participants
4 External links
5 References

[edit] National Qualification Event (NQE)

Of the original 195 applicants, initially 40 teams were selected to participate in the National Qualification Event (NQE). Three teams were added on Aug. 23, 2005 to the semi-finalist 40 teams who were selected from site visits, sending 43 teams to the NQE.

The National Qualification Event was held at California Speedway in Fontana from September 27 through October 5. The results of the NQE were used to cut the 43 teams down to 23 for the race on October 8.

Vehicle performances at the NQE were judged by (1) elapsed time to complete the course; (2) number of obstacles successfully passed without contact; (3) number of gates successfully passed. DARPA did not reveal the relative importance of these three factors. DARPA's final ranking of the vehicles, for purposes of pole position in the Grand Challenge Event (GCE), may have been partly subjective.

The results of the 2005 DARPA NQEs are shown below sorted top to bottom by runs completed and gates passed, compiled from DARPA's published NQE results. This ordering does not correspond to DARPA's ranking of team performance. (For example, this ordering does not reflect speed as an element of performance.) Teams highlighted in green were the teams that DARPA selected to participate in the Grand Challenge desert race.

N.B.: For the first and second run, only 4 obstacles were present whereas for the third and fourth runs 5 obstacles were present. The NQE results presented in the table above show each team's runs sorted left to right from their worst run to their best run in order to better illustrate relative ranking (i.e. not in order of the actual run sequence).

On October 6, the selected teams transported their robots to the starting location. On October 7 the teams had a day to fix any portions of the robots broken in the course of transportation prior to the actual race.

[edit] Race

A Google Talk video about the DARPA 2005 race is available at Google Video

The route to be followed by the robots was supplied to the teams two hours before the start as a computer file with GPS coordinates, one every 72 m (237 feet) of the route. Some teams then went against the spirit of the competition by using topographic maps and aerial imagery to manually map out and program precise path and speed settings (CMU's Red Team employed 13 route editors.) Once the race had started, the robots were not allowed to contact humans in any way.

Each robot started at a different time and was "paused" for different amounts of time during the race; DARPA compensated for the staggered start times and subtracted the pause time from each robot's total to derive its final official time. The $2 million prize was awarded on Sunday, October 9, 2005.

The 2005 competitors were much more successful than those of 2004; only one failed to pass the 11.84 km (7.36 mile) mark set by the best-performing 2004 entry, Sandstorm. By the end, 18 robots had been disabled and five robots finished the course. On the first day, Stanley from Stanford University, and H1ghlander and Sandstorm from Carnegie Mellon University, finished within minutes of each other, with Stanley crossing the finish line first. Kat-5 from Gray Team started much later, but finished in a comparable time. The race paused overnight with one competitor, TerraMax, left on the course at mile 83; TerraMax had the stage to itself on Sunday as it belatedly rumbled home.

The winner of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge was Stanley, with a course time of 6 hours 53 minutes and 8 seconds (6:53:08) with average speed of 30.7 km/h (19.1 mph). CMU's Sandstorm followed with 7:04:50 at 29.9 km/h (18.6 mph) and H1ghlander at 7:14:00 at 29.3 km/h (18.2 mph). Gray Team's Kat-5 came through at 7:30:16 with average speed of 28.2 km/h (17.5 mph). Oshkosh Truck's Terramax finished at 12:51 and would not have been eligible for the prize because it exceeded the ten-hour limit.

The Official Website (requires Flash player plugin) contained a map and positions of the competitors, while TG Daily posted a running summary of the day's events.

[edit] Race Participants

Vehicle	Team Name	Team Home	Time Taken (h:m)	Result
Stanley	Stanford Racing Team	Stanford U., Palo Alto, Calif.	6:54	First place
Sandstorm	Red Team	Carnegie Mellon U., Pittsburgh, PA	7:05	Second place
H1ghlander	Red Team Too	Carnegie Mellon U., Pittsburgh, PA	7:14	Third place
Kat-5	Team Gray	The Gray Insurance Company, Metairie, La.	7:30	Fourth place
TerraMax	Team TerraMax	Oshkosh Truck Corporation, Oshkosh, Wisconsin	12:51	Over 10 hour limit
DEXTER	Team ENSCO	ENSCO, Inc., Springfield, Va.	DNF	Out of race at 81 miles; tire blowout after going off-course due to bent frame
Spirit	Axion Racing	Westlake Village, Calif.	DNF	Out of race at 66 miles; got stuck in sand, possibly after mechanical failure in suspension
Cliff	Virginia Tech Grand Challenge Team	Virginia Tech., Blacksburg, Va.	DNF	Out of race at 44 miles due to vehicle motor mechanical problems.
Rocky	Virginia Tech Team Rocky	Virginia Tech., Blacksburg, Va.	DNF	Out of race at 39 miles; a steep hill caused the oil in its generator to slosh around. The generator's low-oil sensor went off, cutting power to computers.
ION	Desert Buckeyes	Ohio State U., Columbus, Ohio	DNF	Out of race at 29 miles
DAD	Team DAD	Digital Auto Drive/Velodyne Acoustics, Morgan Hill, Calif.	DNF	Out of race at 26 miles; LIDAR scanner failed, loose wire due to vibration.
Desert Rat	Insight Racing	NC State U., Cary, N.C.	DNF	Out of race at 26 miles
Xboxx	Mojavaton	Grand Junction, Col.	DNF	Out of race at 23.5 miles
Golem 2	The Golem Group/UCLA	Los Angeles, Calif.	DNF	Out of race at 22 miles; software bug crashed main computer causing 60mph rampage
CajunBot	Team Cajunbot	U. of LA, Lafayette, La.	DNF	Out of race at 17 miles; The motor on the brake actuator burned out when vehicle was paused for about fifty minutes.
RASCAL	SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering	Thousand Oaks, Calif.	DNF	Out of race at 16 miles; software problems
Desert Tortoise	Intelligent Vehicle Safety Technologies	Littleton, Col.	DNF	Out of race at 14 miles, instability in steering controller caused robot to drive offroad for a power pole.
NaviGATOR	Team CIMAR	U. of FL, Gainesville, Florida	DNF	Out of race at 14 miles; faulty reporting of GPS accuracy caused robot to drive into a bush, where a bug in "blocked path" logic left vehicle unable to recover. ^[1]
Prospect Eleven	Princeton University	Princeton U., N.J.	DNF	Out of race at 10 miles. A code bug slowed down steering and throttle control, sending the robot looping in circles and narrowly missing a clump of reporters.
Spider	Team Cornell	Cornell U., Ithaca, N.Y.	DNF	Out of race at 9 miles; when pause applied, rolled up against a guard rail; when unpaused, could not back away from rail since it had no functional backing software
Alice	Team Caltech	Calif. Inst. of Tech., Pasadena, Calif.	DNF	Out of race at 8 miles; after GPS reacquisition, veered over barrier and towards media
JackBot	MonsterMoto	Cedar Park, Texas	DNF	Out of race at 7 miles
The Meteor	Mitre Meteorites	MITRE Corp., McLean, Va.	DNF	Out of race at 1 mile; dust interfered with sensors causing false positive obstacle detection