Posted on 11/03/2007 9:02:47 AM PDT by dickmc
DARPA has selected the 11 teams that will compete in the Urban Challenge Final Event on Saturday, November 3 at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif. The 11 teams will compete for cash prizes worth $2 million for first, $1 million for second, and $500,000 for third place.
The teams will attempt to complete a complex 60-mile urban course with live traffic in less than six hours. The finalists will operate on the course roads with approximately 50 human-driven traffic vehicles. Speed is not the only factor in determining the winners, as vehicles must also meet the same standards required to pass the California DMV road test.
The Urban Challenge Final Event on November 3 will be webcast live at www.grandchallenge.org, starting at 7:30 am PT.
Link is http://www.grandchallenge.org/darpauc07/watchtherace/livevideo.html
Professional broadcast with MythBusters team narrating. Pretty hard to get other than low bandwidth feed.
So far pretty impressive. TerraMax is something to behold!
1:00 PM
Terramax out. MIT still in. Virginia Tech just completed first round followed just now by Stanford.
Some vehicles showing amazing intelligence including passing other ‘stalled’ vehicles.
Narration and production highly professional. Even have chase helicopters.
Race likely to go for a number of hours. As three missions.
1:30 PM
Virginia Tech and Stanford now on 2 nd of 3 rounds.
MIT may be out.
1:37 PM
MIT back in.
1:41 PM
UCF now out.
1:51 PM
Ben Franklin (Univ of PA) now completed first of three rounds!
1:52
Boss (Carnegie Mellon) now completed first round.
2:50 PM
Virginia Tech first to complete second of three rounds.
Winner won’t be announced till tomorrow as there are time deducts for pauses in some circumstances and for various driving errors. Supposedly all the times were fairly close.
Virginia Tech climbed the curb at one point.
Current status is at http://www.grandchallenge.org/darpauc07/watchtherace/statusboard.html
and...
they did say they would announce the final times tomorrow. Also the Mythbusters did say that the Discovery Channel was planning a five part series on the race and background.
They had lots of interviews and technical show and tells during the race. All in all, I found it more interesting than watching television of Nascar at one of the short tracks.
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