[tt] 11 Finalists for Robo Race; Safety Issues Stop the Rest | Danger Room from Wired.com

[Brian Atkins]

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/finalists-named.html

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.

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.

-- 
Brian Atkins
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/