robots in disguise!

The Urban Challenge has just ended, just as I finally finished my online search for BMW bulb. After several weeks of waiting, here are now the placers in the race participated by 11 robo-cars…

Carnegie Mellon’s Tartan Racing Team headed by robotics expert William “Red” Whittaker won the first place prize of $2 million with its vehicle “Boss”, while Stanford University’s Stanford Racing team led by computer scientist Sebastian Thrun received $1 million as the second placer with its vehicle “Junior”, and Virginia Tech’s Victor Tango team got the $500,000 as the third placer.

That result has been revealed by DARPA director Tony Tether. After announcing the third- and second- place winners, he presented an anecdote regarding his college and graduate school days at Stanford University. It was mainly to add suspense, though it has been quite obvious that the first place prize will be given to Carnegie Mellon as it approaches first to the finish. Tether mentioned that Tartan was clearly the winner.

After running down through the team’s different start times and the race’ off-the-clock pauses, Tether proclaimed the results in numbers. Tartan’s vehicles got an average of approximately 14 miles per hour throughout the course, covering 55 miles. Stanford got 13 miles per hour, while Virginia Tech got a little bit less than that. Tether also declared MIT as the fourth placer.

Overwhelmed with the achievement, Whittaker said, “Robots sometimes stun the world, inspire a lot of people and change the belief of what is possible.” “We’ve seen that here and once the perception of what’s possible changes it never goes back. This is a phenomenal thing for robotics,” he continued. “I watched these things driving and I forgot after awhile that there was nobody in there,” he further said.

Chris Urmson, Tartan team’s director of technology said, “Everything that I saw Boss do looked great.” “It was smooth. It was fast, It interacted with other traffic well. It did what it was supposed to do,” he added.

Tether was so pleased with the race that he even called it a “fantastic accomplishment”. He said the technology for robotic vehicles is then ready enough for other companies and organizations to hone it further.

Tether said, “DARPA is an interesting organization.” “We really never finish anything. All we really do is show that it can be done. We take the technical excuse off the table, to the point where other people can no longer say ‘Hey this is a very interesting idea, but you know that you can’t do it.’ I think that we’re close to that point, that it’s time for this technology to [be furthered] by somebody.”

Now, we are like to think who would really adopt this concept on actual road cars and who will make it available in the global market.