Victorville (CA) – DARPA URBAN CHALLENGE RACE BLOG

Videos, pictures and articles covering the Urban Challenge Qualifications

Posted 1:56 PM

Stanford, Tartan Racing and Victor Tango have finished (in that order) the Urban Challenge race.  DARPA officials warn that the final results won't be known until tomorrow as the judges have to assess time penalties for traffic infractions.

Posted 12:32 PM

MIT HAS CRASHED INTO CORNELL - MIT's bot collided with Cornell's "Skynet" while trying to pass on the left.

Posted 11:11 AM 

Sorry for the delay in updates.. we were filming on the course away from any wifi networks.  Five teams are now off the course (disqualified/retired).  Those teams are Team AnnieWay, Team Oshkosh/TerraMax, Honeywell/IVS, CarOLO and Team UCF.

We witnessed the UCF bot go off-road in the cityscape portion and almost hit a building.  A similar thing happened to Team Oshkosh when its bot jumped a curb and actually hit a building. 

Posted 8:34 AM

Honeywell is off again and that completes the starts.  All bots and chase vehicles are on the course  now... it's going to get real ugly, real quick. 

Posted 8:27 AM

Annieway is now off.  Tartan Racing has fixed their problems and the bot is now off.  Boss is running smooth and fast.

Posted 8:23 AM

Honeywell's bot went out of the chute, did a U-Turn and came back on the officials.  It was paused just before it hit the concrete walls.  Tartan Racing's "Boss" has been repositioned and the jumbotron is now off.

Posted 8:15 AM 

Cornell and UCF are away.  This is  awesome.. VictorTango and MIT are passing each other on the course.  Tartan Racing's woes continue and a team member tells us that a nearby jumbotron television has nuked their vehicle components.  The team is feverishly working on  the problem.

Team Oshkosh is in the chute. Terramax is out... it paused for about 15 seconds in front of the press and then took off.

Posted 8:09 AM
The pace of  the starts is faster than we expecetd.  They are putting cars out about every two minutes.  Ben Franklin just left.  Poor Tartan Racing, the team is working on the car and the hood is up.

MIT is out of the chute.  Four robot cars MIT, Stanford, Victor Tango and Ben Franklin are now on the course. 

Posted 8:06 AM

VictorTango is off.  Moving into the chute area is Ben Franklin's "Little Ben" Prius.  Next up is Stanford.  Crowd goes wild for Junior.  Junior is off... it slowly went out of the chute and paused in front of the cameras before speeding off.

Announcer just said VictorTango has just hit 20 MPH.

Posted 7:45 AM Pacific November 3 2007

The horses of the Marine Corp Mounted Color Guard momentarily got spooked coming into the area.  Maybe the laser or radar beams scared the horses. After a few minutes, the horses were rerouted and ended up in front of the crowd successfully.

Dr. Tether has told the crowd, "If you're not using your cell phone turn it off."  He added that no one knows what cell phone signals will do to the robots, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Parade of chase cars are off.... one has a license plate reading, "WATCH OUT!"

Stanford, VictorTango and Tartan Racing are in the chutes. VictorTango's "Odin" will be the first out of the chute.

Posted 10:52 PM Pacific November 2 2007

It’s 9 PM the night before the big race and the pit area is a ghost town – well except for members of Stanford Racing d Victor Tango who are hard at work guarding their cars and finalizing code.  Team Victor Tango, as the name suggests, is comprised of Virginia Tech faculty and students and the two team members at the tent were more than eager to talk to us.

“We’re here to stop anyone from cutting a wire or touching the sensors,” joked the pair as they tried to stay awake and warm.  The mood was definitely more serious at the Stanford Racing tent as software lead Michael Montemerlo was busily typing away and staring at a large LCD with lines of code scrolling upwards.  While we had no clue what was on the screen, we did see a lot of “if… else” type statements.  Team leader Sebastian Thrun walked in a shooed us away before we could ask any more questions.

So far we’ve spent more than a week in Victorville, living in our RV and cursing all the talcum powder-like dust that seems to stick to every electronic gadget.  In fact, I’m wiping dust from my laptop’s keyboard and touchpad as I type.  I’m not even sure if my camera will ever be the same again and parts on our Manfrotto tripod and tripod heads have been coming loose.

Despite the difficulties, we’ve had a great time hanging around with the teams and pumping out great videos of smooth runs, awesome crashes and geeky videos.  A benefit of such close contact is that once in a while you get some very good gossip.  The Victor Tango team members told us a great story about how their vehicle’s only crash was done by a human.  “It has a perfect record in autonomous mode, but one driver turned into a pole at the qualifications,” they said.  Thankfully the team consists mainly of mechanical engineering students and they designed the sensor frames to smartly buckle – like crumple zones in cars.

Earlier today the pit area was a zoo with tons of media and military folks.  For the most part the military personnel were very quiet and asked few questions, but you just know the wheels have to be turning in their heads… we’ll see just how fast those wheels will turn after tomorrow’s race.

Oh... you didn't think I would post something up without a few videos did you?  Here is an interview we did with Victor Tango earlier in the day and also some footage from their merging test at qualification course A.

Victor Tango Course A run

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