Talk:DARPA Grand Challenge

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How long is the course? Our article contradicts itself: 150 vs. 210 miles. Also, it's not clear to me whether the vechicles use regular roads, dirt roads, or drive cross country. AxelBoldt 16:18, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't know where the 210 mile number keeps coming from. Looking at a map the distance of 150 miles is much more likely (the course this year ran from just outside Barstow, California to just past the Nevada border). The number 210 would be more accurate if the race started in Los Angeles, but it didn't. However, the DARPA rules specify that it can be any distance under 300 miles (so, next year's course may be somewhere else entirely). And the vehicles travel cross-country: no roads. However, it's never been clear to me what they do when they have to cross roads - although it's a moot point since I don't think any vehicles got far enough to any cross highways.

Anyways, let me see what I can do about the article. RadicalBender 17:24, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

For the 2005 race, DARPA has said the course will be at most 175 miles. As for roads, because of environmental restrictions outside of their control (the desert tortoise for example), all or most of the course is over dirt roads. The course can and most likely will cross active roads. In last year's competition, one team was paused to allow a truck to cross the road. The only external control allowed (actually, its required) is a 3-way control, RUN, PAUSE, and STOP. If the vehicle is paused, the timer stops running for that team until they start running again. --Escher0 12:08, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Post Race Hype (+ Unholy Alliance of Wired Magazine & Stanford AI Lab)

Should the article mention the hype surrounding the DARPA Grand Challenge, in particular the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge? For example, how much of a challenge was it really? The course was precisely layed out by thousands of waypoints; no sophisticated planning procedure was necessary. Four separate teams managed to finish the course in time, which suggests that the task was not that hard. In fact, several days before the race the German leader of the Stanford team announced that this time with very high probability there would be a winner, in line with the evaluations of other experts. But after Stanford's Volkswagen won due to a technical glitch of CMU's vehicle he tried to fuel the hype by claiming, rather inconsistently: "The impossible has been achieved!" According to a rather biased Wired magazine article he then compared himself to Charles Lindbergh, like a chicken claiming "I'm an eagle." Confetti parade, anybody? :-)

One of the organizers (Tether - also ex-Stanford) even compared the race to the first flight of the Wright brothers. The Wired article, however, later claimed that another German (Dickmanns) played the role of the Wright Brothers of this field in 1986.

Soon after the race the Stanford AI lab home page also claimed: "Dec 29, 2005: Stanford built three of the top ten robots ever! According to a recent evaluation by Wired Magazine, three of Stanford's robots were among the top ten robots ever: Stanley (Number 1), Shakey (Number 5), and the Stanford Cart (Number 10). Wired Magazine polled numerous experts to determine the 50 Best Robots Ever. Check it out!" Unfortunately Wired magazine is known as a megaphone of Stanford with headquarters in San Francisco - few if any unbiased roboticists outside of California would agree with that list. What kind of "experts" did they poll? Maybe cartoonists, since Number 2 is a fictional Japanese comic strip robot. The other cars that finished shortly after Stanley are not even mentioned... Actually I don't think any mere car would rank near the top 5 of a serious robot list, which would be dominated by Japanese robots - real ones, not fictional ones - since Japan dominates research in this field and has 40 percent of the world's robots, including many of the most sophisticated and famous ones.

Anyway, since the hype was a significant part of the event it seems worth mentioning, even if it was totally overblown. User Ravedave is right though: it must be done in a way that does not leave any room for POV. De-Hyping Stan 16:39, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1995 S-Class Robot Car of Dickmanns

I wrote the first draft of an article about Ernst Dickmanns and his fast vision-guided autonomous Mercedes robots of the past 25 years. ERDI 20:34, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Links

I think that this page has too many links! Nate | Talk ^Esperanza! 02:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)