February 23, 2004
Odds on CMU for Grand Challange
Here is a nice article about the DARPA Grand Challange (Autonomous Vehicle race through the desert from Barstow to Las Vegas) that puts CMU in the lead as the team to beat. Since the race course is only released two hours before the start, the vehicle teams must either rely on their vehicle to do the navigation based on on-boards sensors, or pre-plan their route in under two hours. CMU has taken the latter approach.
In the space of an hour, this group will attempt to plan every twist and turn Sandstorm might take in a 210-mile scramble across the back roads and open spaces of the Mojave Desert -- which side of the road to favor in a turn, which obstacles to go around and which to barge over.
Today's exercise, like yesterday's and those of last weekend, is a dry run for the March 13 race. And if the concentration displayed by the students and other volunteers seems particularly intense, it's because what they are doing is crucial for Sandstorm's success.
"If you had the perfect map and the perfect [route] plan, you'd win this race," said William "Red" Whittaker, the renowned roboticist who organized the team last spring and has since pushed its members to the edge of their endurance. "There's no sense that any of these things are perfect."
The term for this in engineering is: brute force approach.
Posted by elkaim at February 23, 2004 11:37 AM