Security

11 Finalists for Robo Race; Safety Issues Stop the Rest

Not 20 teams as originally planned, but a mere 11 driverless vehicles will compete in the $3.5 million Urban Challenge unmanned street rally this Saturday. The reason, said DARPA director Tony Tether, was that not all of the robo-cars were safe enough on the road. During the qualifying events, one autobot after another drove into […]

Not 20 teams as originally planned, but a mere 11 driverless vehicles will compete in the $3.5 million Urban Challenge unmanned street rally this Saturday. The reason, said DARPA director Tony Tether, was that not all of the robo-cars were safe enough on the road. During the qualifying events, one autobot after another drove into trouble - some crashed, some made dangerous turns, and some flew off the course entirely. "It would be terrible for one bot to take out another," Tether noted. And it'd be even worse if the machines violated DARPA's prime directive for the event: "Don't Hit Anyone!!!" The finalists are:

Victor Tango
CarOLO
Ben Franklin Racing Team
Team Cornell
Stanford Racing Team
Tartan Racing
MIT
Team UCF
Team AnnieWay
Intelligent Vehicle Systems
Team Oshkosh Truck

Tether first called Virginia Tech's Victor Tango team leader, Charles Reinholtz, to the stage in the main tent this morning to present him with an official "Finalist" license plate.

Whittaker_finalist
Introducing Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing, he said "The next team, if we had to give a ranking, it would be number one." Tartan Racing team leader Red Whittaker, shown here between Tony Tether (left) and Urban Challenge program manager Norm Whitaker, accepted the team's plate.

After announcing ten teams, Tether engaged in a bit of showmanship in claiming to have announced all of the teams and making as if to leave the stage. Finally, he called on Team Oshkosh Truck's John Beck to accept his team's Finalist plate.

"I tried to justify why they couldn't make it,," Tether said half-jokingly at the press conference afterward. "But I couldn't."

Team Oshkosh's 15-ton truck is so big that officials had to resize one of the qualifying courses for it. But, said Tether, it performed better than any other bot on that course, Test Area A, the left-turn-and-merge course.

Now the finalists have a day and a half to make final adjustments to their bots while DARPA officials prepare the race track for the 6-hour, 60 mile race.

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