December 8, 2003
Carnegie Mellon DARPA Grand Challenge
This is an article on Carnegie Mellon's entrant into the DARPA Grand challenge, a 250 mile overland autonomous race with a one million dollar grand prize (and nothing for the runners-up).
Whittaker's students on the Red Team have joined volunteers and experts from more than a dozen sponsors. The students bring expertise in engineering, computing, art and robotics. Sponsors, including Applanix Corp., The Boeing Co., Carnegie Mellon, Caterpillar, Inc., CM Labs, HD Systems, Inc., Intel Corp., The Lord Corp., Mechron Power Systems, Omnistar, Robotics Foundry, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), Seagate Technologies, Inc. and TerraSim, Inc. are contributing technologies, components, software and assistance. Chip Ganassi Racing, Rod Millen Motorsports and Team Rod Hall Hummer are counseling on the art and science of off-road racing.
All are working to pull together the mechanics, electronics and software that will give their diesel-powered Hummer, named "Sandstorm," the guts and smarts to win the race.
Nice to have those kind of resources.