Talk:Kat-5 (vehicle)

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The photos taken at the Darpa Grand Challenge 2005 show only two SICK LMS 291 LADAR units on the roof. The third LMS 291 as well as the RIEGL LMS-Q120 described in the technical paper and visible in photos from the National Qualifying Event seem to disappear in photos from the Grand Challenge event. I wonder what happened to the other two LADAR units.

[edit] VaMP vs Kat-5 & Stanley & H1ghlander and Sandstorm & TerraMax

Five cars finished the course of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge: Kat-5 & Stanley & H1ghlander and Sandstorm & TerraMax. It is interesting to compare them to the earlier VaMP robot car of Mercedes-Benz and Ernst Dickmanns. My sources are mostly Wikipedia and the rest of the web. In 2005, the DARPA cars drove 212 km without human intervention. In 1995, the VaMP drove up to 158 km without human intervention. The DARPA cars drove on a dirt road flattened by a steamroller. The VaMP drove on the Autobahn. In both cases the road boundaries were easily identifiable by computer vision. Like many commercial cars, the DARPA cars used GPS navigation; essentially driving from one waypoint to the next (almost 3000 waypoints for the entire course). Like humans, the VaMP drove by vision only. The DARPA cars reached speeds up to 40 km/h. The VaMP reached speeds up to 180 km/h. So the VaMP was four times faster although its computer processors apparently were 1000 times slower. The DARPA cars did not encounter any traffic but a few stationary obstacles. The VaMP drove in traffic around moving obstacles, passing other cars. Interestingly, the 2007 Urban Grand Challenge is trying to repeat something the VaMP was already able to do 12 years ago. Willingandable 17:10, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I edited this one too, see the page on Stanley for my reasonsKivaan 21:03, 25 August 2007 (UTC)