DARPA Grand Challenge

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2007 Urban Challenge
2007 Urban Challenge

The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for driverless cars, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the central research organization of the United States Department of Defense. Congress has authorized DARPA to award cash prizes to further DARPA’s mission to sponsor revolutionary, high-payoff research that bridges the gap between fundamental discoveries and their use for national security. DARPA has sponsored two competitions and announced a third using the “Grand Challenge” prize authority, all in the area of autonomous vehicles. DARPA is not restricted from conducting Grand Challenge competitions in other areas in the future.

The first Grand Challenge took place on March 13, 2004 on a desert course stretching from Barstow, California to Primm, Nevada, but did not produce a finisher. At the second DARPA Grand Challenge, held on October 8, 2005, the Stanford Racing Team completed the 212.4 km (132-mile) course in just under 7 hours to win a US$2M prize.

Both the first and second DARPA Grand Challenge competitions advanced the technologies needed to create the first fully autonomous ground vehicles capable of completing a substantial off-road course within a limited time. The third event, The DARPA Urban Challenge, scheduled to take place November 3, 2007, further advances vehicle requirements to include autonomous operation in a mock urban environment.

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[edit] History

The history of autonomous vehicles starts in 1977 with the Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Lab in Japan. On a dedicated, clearly marked course it achieved speeds of up to 20 miles per hour (30 km/h), by tracking white street markers (special hardware was necessary, since commercial computers were much slower than they are today).

The breakthrough in autonomous driving came in the 1980s through the work of Ernst Dickmanns and his team at Bundeswehr Universität München. Their vision-guided Mercedes-Benz robot van achieved 60 miles per hour (100 km/h) on streets without traffic. The subsequent 800 million Euro EU project Prometheus on autonomous vehicles (1987-1995) brought further progress. A culmination point was achieved in 1995, when Dickmanns´ re-engineered autonomous S-Class Mercedes-Benz took a 1000 mile (1600 km) trip from Munich in Bavaria to Copenhagen in Denmark and back, using saccadic computer vision and transputers to react in real time. The robot achieved speeds exceeding 110 miles per hour (180 km/h) on the German Autobahn. Unlike the early robot cars it drove in traffic, executing maneuvers to pass other cars. It was, however, designed as a research system without emphasis on long distance reliability. On the 1000-mile trip, it achieved a mean time between human interventions of 9km, or 95% autonomous driving.

Also in 1995, the CMU Navlab project achieved 98.2% autonomous driving on a 3000-mile (5000 km) "No hands across America" trip. This car, however, was semi-autonomous by nature: it used neural networks to control the steering wheel, but throttle and brakes were human-controlled.

The abilities of these early vehicles heavily influenced research world-wide, including three DARPA efforts known as Demo I, Demo II, Demo III. Demo III (2001) demonstrated the ability of unmanned ground vehicles to navigate miles of difficult off-road terrain, avoiding obstacles such as rocks and trees.

Team ENSCO's entry in the first Grand Challenge, DAVID
Team ENSCO's entry in the first Grand Challenge, DAVID

The Grand Challenge was the first long distance competition for robot cars in the World; to date, there have been other competitions for semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles, but none on the scale of the Grand Challenge. The U.S. Congress authorized DARPA to offer prize money ($1 million) for the first Grand Challenge to facilitate robotic development, with the ultimate goal of making one-third of ground military forces autonomous by 2015. Following the 2004 event, Dr. Tony Tether, the director of DARPA, announced that the prize money had been increased to US$2 million for the next event, which was claimed on October 9, 2005. The first, second and third places in the 2007 Urban Challenge will receive US$2 million, US$1 million, and US$500,000, respectively.

The competition is open to teams and organizations from around the world, with the proviso that they have a single U.S. citizen on the roster. Teams have participated from highschools, universities, businesses and other organizations. More than 100 teams registered in the first year, bringing a wide variety of technological skills to the race. In the second year, 195 teams from 36 US states and 4 foreign countries entered the race.

[edit] 2004 Grand Challenge

Main article: 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge

In the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge, none of the robot vehicles finished the 227.2 km (142-mile) desert route. Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team traveled the farthest distance, completing 11.8 km (7.4 miles) of the course. The distance may be misleading in measuring the accomplishment, however, as some of the most difficult terrain was located at the start of the course.

[edit] 2005 Grand Challenge

Stanley, the winner of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge
Stanley, the winner of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge
Main article: 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge

The 2005 Grand Challenge began at 6:40am on October 8, 2005. This time "Stanley", the robotic Volkswagen Touareg of "The Stanford Racing Team", beat the field—completing the 212.4 km (132-mile) race with a winning time of 6 hours 53 minutes and 58 seconds. Four other vehicles successfully completed the race. These were 2nd place: Carnegie Mellon's Sandstorm at 7hr 4m; 3rd place: Carnegie Mellon's H1ghlander at 7hr 14m; 4th place: Gray Team's Kat-5 at 7hr 30m and finally, not within the 10 hour time limit but 5th place: TerraMax at 12hr 51m. All but one of the 23 finalists in the 2005 race surpassed the 11.78 km (7.36 mile) distance completed by the best vehicle in the 2004 race.

Vehicles in the 2005 race passed through three narrow tunnels, included more than 100 sharp left and right turns. The race concluded through Beer Bottle Pass, a winding mountain pass with sheer drop-offs on both sides. Although the 2004 course required more elevation gain and some very sharp switchbacks (Daggett Ridge) were required near the beginning of the route, the course had far fewer curves and generally wider roads than the 2005 course.

The natural rivalry between the teams from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon (Sebastian Thrun, head of the Stanford team was previously a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon and colleague of Red Whittaker, head of the CMU team) was played out during the race. Mechanical problems plagued H1ghlander before it was passed by Stanley. Gray Team’s entry was a miracle in itself, as the team from the suburbs of New Orleans was caught in Hurricane Katrina a few short months before the race. The fourth finisher, Terramax, a 30,000 pound entry from Oshkosh Trucks finished on the second day. The huge truck spent the night idling on the course, and was particularly nimble in carefully picking its way down the narrow roads of Beer Bottle Pass.

A vehicle being developed for the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge
A vehicle being developed for the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge

[edit] 2007 Urban Challenge

For 2007, DARPA introduced a new challenge, which it named the "Urban Challenge". The Urban Challenge, will take place on November 3, 2007. The location of the event will not be announced until the qualification process is complete. The course will involve a 60-mile (96 km) urban area course, to be completed in less than 6 hours. Rules will include obeying all traffic regulations while negotiating with other traffic and obstacles and merging into traffic. DARPA also announced that it will allow teams to submit proposals for up to US$1 Million in development funds. While the 2004 and 2005 events were more physically challenging for the vehicles, the robots operated in isolation and did not encounter other vehicles on the course. The Urban Challenge requires designers to build vehicles able to obey all traffic laws while they detect and avoid other robots on the course. This is a particular challenge for vehicle software, as vehicles must make “intelligent” decisions in real time based on the actions of other vehicles. [1]

The event is being followed closely by auto manufacturers for the implications it holds for smarter cars and safer highways in the future.[citation needed]

Unlike the past two challenges, DARPA has announced that some teams will receive development funding, based on proposals submitted to DARPA. Eleven teams can receive up to $1 million a piece under this special program track (Track A) [2]. These 11 teams largely represent major universities and large corporate interests such as CMU teaming with GM, Stanford teaming with Volkswagen, Oshkosh, Honeywell, Raytheon, Caltech, Autonomous Solutions, Virginia Tech, Cornell, and MIT. One of the few independent entries in Track A is the Golem Group.

On December 8, DARPA reinstalled the winning cash prize money. The winner will receive $2 million. The second place finisher will receive $1 million and the third place finisher will receive $500,000.

[edit] Basic Rules

  • Vehicle must be stock or have a documented safety record.
  • Vehicle must obey the California state driving laws.
  • Vehicle must be entirely autonomous, using only GPS and the information it detects with its sensors.
  • DARPA will provide the route network 24 hours before the race starts.
  • Vehicles will complete the route by driving between specified checkpoints.
  • DARPA will provide a file detailing the order the checkpoints must be driven to 5 minutes before the race start.
  • Vehicles may “stop and stare” for at most 10 seconds.
  • Vehicles must operate in rain and fog, with GPS blocked.
  • Vehicles must avoid collision with vehicles and other objects such as carts, bicycles, traffic barrels, and objects in the environment such as utility poles.
  • Vehicles must be able to operate in parking areas and perform U-turns as required by the situation.

[edit] External links

Portal:Robotics
 Robotics Portal

[edit] Official Sites

[edit] Other Government-funded competitive prize initiatives thus far

These round out the U.S. federal government's agencies having the 3 largest procurement budgets.

[edit] Team Sites

[edit] TV Specials

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