UPDATE: Tartan Racing wins 1st prize at DARPA Urban Challenge!

William Atkins
Monday, 05 November 2007 18:43

Science - Energy

The DARPA Urban Challenge was held on November 3, 2007, at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, California. The Carnegie Mellon University team, Tartan Racing, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, won the $2 million prize with its vehicle named “Boss.”          

As written in the iTWire article “Three possible winners of driverless DARPA Urban Challenge,” the competition is a driverless test whose goal is to develop fully autonomous ground vehicles able to navigate on urban streets.

Stanford University, which won the 2005 race, came in second place (with a $1 million prize) and Virginia Tech finished in third place.

It is sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research part of the U.S. Department of Defense. Former George Air Force Base is located in Southern California's Mojave Desert.

This event was different from previous events because the vehicles in the 2007 competition were directly competing against each other. They had to avoid other competitors on the course and obey traffic laws set up beforehand. Such actions require computer software that allows the vehicles to make “intelligent” decisions based on the environment around them.

The course was set on a 60 mile (96 kilometer) area designed to simulate an urban setting. The time restriction to complete the course was 6 hours.

Based primarily on safety requirements, eleven teams qualified for the event: AnnieWay, Ben Franklin, CarOLO, Cornell, Honeywell/Intelligent Vehicle Systems, MIT, Stanford Racing, Tartan Racing, Team Oshkosh, Team UCF, and Victor Tango.

Three teams finished the DARPA Urban Challenge within the required time and without major problems: Stanford University (Stanford Racing, with their VW Passat), Virginia Tech (Victor Tango, with their modified Ford Escape Hybid), and Carnegie Mellon (Tartan Racing, with their Chevrolet Tahoe).

The results were announced on Sunday, November 4, 2007, based on various aspects of the race (not just speed on the course) such as compliance with traffic laws and safety.

DARPA officials stated the competition was a success this year. They are trying to develop technology that will allow military vehicles to navigate without drivers through any terrain and through any type of dangerous environment. Eventually, they hope that self-driving cars for all consumers will be possible.

Competition results and pictures are found on the DARPA Urban Challenge website: http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp.

[Author note: My mistake on the winning of Stanford has been corrected. Stanford got second place, while Carnegie Mellon received the first place award.]