Oshkosh Truck's entry wouldn't fit within the boundaries at the turn-and-merge course here at DARPA's unmanned vehicle rally, so after a couple of days of head-scratching, DARPA officials moved the boundaries.
That should make the other teams happy as well, since the concrete K-rails marking the track's outer limits were so close to the roadway and so many robot cars had had trouble with them that some here had taken to calling the place the Demo Derby track.
Oshkosh ran the course successfully this morning, making left turns and merging into traffic for 8 laps (there are two turns on each lap) without pause or incident.
The truck did get three honks from the human drivers on the course who felt the vehicle cut it too close in turning in front of them. It looked to me as though the truck had made the turn in time, but its large size and relatively low speed meant it needed extra time to clear the intersection.
The teams have now run the three test courses at least once, and DARPA officials have started to shake things up a bit with second-time-around runs. Standford, for instance, just got handed a pop quiz--they'll jump the line at the turn-and-merge course for another go-around and further evaluation.
