23 Finalists Qualify for GC 2005 Race

Posted 6 Oct 2005 at 13:24 UTC by The Swirling Brain

The Grand Challenge 2005 week of grueling finals has weeded out all but 23 teams (not 20!) to race! Only U.S. teams made it and all other countries have been shut out. Each vehicle got 4 runs and of the 23 vehicles only 5 made it through the entire finals course all 4 times. Those included H1ghlander; a converted Humvee Sandstorm; a modified Volkswagen Touareg by Stanford University; a six-wheel truck; and a Jeep Grand Cherokee all probably favored of the 23 to win. The actual race will be held October 8th in the Mojave desert near Primm, Nevada. The course won't be revealed until two hours before the event begins at 6:30am. The course will include lake beds, narrow desert roads, tight turns, tunnels, gateways and treacherous mountain passes. The team whose vehicle traverses the entire course the fastest in under 10 hours will win the $2 million prize.

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would be TV worth watching, posted 6 Oct 2005 at 18:01 UTC by jeffkoenig » (Master)

Too bad this won't be televised. I would really be interested in seeing an all-weekend feed of this.

This or Robonexus, posted 6 Oct 2005 at 18:43 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

Yep, I'd love to watch this or even tag along with Steve to Robonexus. We're so deprived aren't we Jeff? :-(

Hey Steve. . ., posted 7 Oct 2005 at 17:20 UTC by RossumsChild » (Observer)

If you notice this. . . how are the RoboNexus attendees reacting to the fact that the Grand Challenge is going on during the convention? Am I safe in assuming that lots of people will be watching the web from the showroom floor to glean news of the event as it happens?

Webcast Oct 8th!, posted 8 Oct 2005 at 02:09 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

As RossumsChild points out in his personal blog entry, the Grand Challenge website will have a webcast on Oct 8th! See the left sidebar. Currently it's greyed out but it should be operational on race day.

Two places at one time..., posted 8 Oct 2005 at 14:08 UTC by steve » (Master)

Yes, I wish I could have gone to both Robonexus and the Grand Challenge. I've been checking the live updates online. And the CMU Red Team has a booth at Robonexus so we'll probably be getting updates there today too.

Results and a trick., posted 8 Oct 2005 at 21:48 UTC by RossumsChild » (Observer)

Stanley (Stanford Racing Team), Highlander (Red Team Too - CMU), and Sandstorm (Red Team - CMU) have all completed the Grand Challenge course as of 2:30PM PDT.

The flash player plugin doesn't always flush and renew data when you click "refresh" like it should, so if you visited Grandchallenge.org before Race-day, the status boards might still be disabled for you. If you're having trouble getting the new info to show up, make sure you fully clear your browser's cache and then reload the page. Then it should work fine.

The status board incorrectly continues to advance the time of each bot after it crosses the finish line, so the times listed are not relevant for the bots that have completed their runs. Stanley came in first at about 7:30, with the other two arriving within the next twenty minutes or so.

The status board also places completed robots at the bottom of the distance ranking pile, and the map incorrectly displays them once they'be transitioned across the finish line. It is almost as if the programmer really didn't think that any of the bots would finish, and so he didn't have to program for that eventuality.

Craving a good webcast, posted 8 Oct 2005 at 22:00 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

I was hoping the webcast would be more of a video type realtime stream presentation or at least video clips with some type of useful information about the current status of the race. Oh well. From the grandchallange.org website it's sort of hard to figure out what's really going on. It would be nice to have some sort of info about how the eliminated bots got eliminated. Well, at least it looks like someone will win the $2 mill! I know they said if someone won that there would be no 2006 GC but I think it would be interesting to see a new harder course for 2006 with another prize.

No winner declared!, posted 9 Oct 2005 at 02:41 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

So far no winner has been declared in the GC 2005. Four robots crossed the finish line with Stanford's Stanly robot crossing in apparently the unofficial quickest time. The Grand Challenge website says that operations will commence in the morning. Does that mean a winner will be declared in the morning or will there be a run off on Sunday???

Here's some video., posted 9 Oct 2005 at 04:23 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

Here's video of a news story on the GC race.

Stayed up..., posted 9 Oct 2005 at 11:11 UTC by marcin » (Journeyer)

.. to watch the webcast (in Australia, the start time was 11:30PM) - I'm used to late night events as I like to watch the European Formula 1 races live as well (normally start about 10:30PM here), but unfortunately watching those green and red bars wasn't quite what I expected from a 'webcast'. It could have been so cool. Instead I got some programming done on Scaredy - while feeling properly humbled compared to those fine machines out there in Nevada.

An alternative to DARPA GC2006, posted 9 Oct 2005 at 14:49 UTC by RossumsChild » (Observer)

Why not transition it to another department?

Personally, I've love to see the DoT take over for GC 2006.

Make it a cross-country road race with street legal vehicles. Wouldn't that be awesome?

RoboRally, posted 10 Oct 2005 at 01:00 UTC by marcin » (Journeyer)

The logical evolution ... WRRC - World Robot Rally Championship - courses all over the world: sand, dirt, snow, ice and asphalt. For added excitement - get all the cars to start at the same time. Maybe also standardise on a chassis - I don't think TerraMax and Ghostrider are really peers - somehting like a small Japanese hatch with AWD.

I'd come to watch.

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