Driving for Dollars: Urban Challenge Purse Put at $3.5 Million

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will award $2 million, $1 million, and $500,000 awards to the top three robotic finishers who complete its new Urban Challenge course in November 2007.

Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Kenneth J. Krieg approved the cash prizes, evidencing the Department’s interest in making one-third of all combat vehicles — principally supply vehicles — driver-less by 2015.

DARPA has staged two desert Grand Challenges, in 2004 and 2005 in the Mojave, with significant difficulties posed by geography and terrain. The 2007 Urban Challenge will feature fully autonomous ground vehicles conducting simulated military supply missions in a mock urban area. The race will take place on November 3, 2007, at a location to be announced later, in the western United States.

Robotic vehicles will attempt to complete a 60-mile course through traffic in less than six hours, operating under their own computer-based control. Vehicles must obey traffic laws while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles.

Learning Curve. Participants in past Grand Challenges have truly risen to the occasion, learning and innovating as they go. The number of sensors and software applications integrated into most of the experimental vehicles increased dramatically between the first and second races. Inertial sensors proliferated, with cost, size, and power consumption going down, while performance went up. Inertial systems, along with various camera/vision apparati, function as the workhorses covering the ground in most of the vehicles. GPS generally teams with a central processing unit (CPU) to act as the brain guiding the process.

William “Red” Whittaker of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and Louis Nastro of Applanix Corporation co-authored a detailed technical article in September 2006 GPS World on their experience with the students of Carnegie Mellon’s Red Team Racing effort, designing and outfitting two vehicles that competed and placed in the 2005 race.

To qualify for the race or simply watch, see the Grand Challenge website for additional information and rules for the Urban Challenge.