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DARPA Grand Challenge - Urban Challenge Daily Updates

Go To: DARPA Urban Challenge Web Site / CSAIL DGC Photos / CSAIL DGC Videos

Urban Challenge in the News:

MIT Comes in Fourth at Urban Challenge, Plays by Different Rules, MIT Technology Review, November 6, 2007 MIT finishes fourth in DARPA challenge for robotic vehicles, MIT News Office, November 5, 2007 MIT team places fourth in robocar race, boston.com, November 5, 2007

Updates from the DARPA Grand Challenge Team:

11/4/07 Out of the 35 teams to attend the qualifying event for the DARPA Urban Challenge last week, team MIT was one of eleven vehicles to qualify and one of six vehicles to complete the race. The Tartan Racing Team out of Carnegie Mellon University took first place in the challenge. The Urban Challenge consisted of three missions completed in one day. The course was over 60 miles long and ranged over paved and unpaved surfaces. Complex behaviors included parking, going through intersections, through traffic circles, and avoiding obstacles. Vehicles interacted both with each other and with manned cars throughout the course. All vehicles were required to comply with California traffic laws. The MIT car finished in well under the six hour time limit set for the course. We are very proud of team MIT for their excellent performance! 11/3/07 3:45 pm PT Team MIT was one of six vehicles to complete the autonomous vehicle DARPA Urban Challenge. The challenge consisted of three missions completed in one day. The course was over 60 miles long and ranged over paved and unpaved surfaces. Complex behaviors included parking, going through intersections, and traffic circles. Vehicles interacted both with each other and with manned cars throughout the course. Five vehicles were taken out of the race in the first mission. The teams that completed the race were the Stanford Racing Team, The Tartan Racing Team out of Carnegie Mellon University, Team Cornell, VictorTango based out of of Virginia Tech, The Ben Franklin Racing Team out of the Univ. of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University, and Team MIT. MIT's Grand Challenge team is led by four co-principal investigators: John Leonard from the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and CSAIL, Jonathan How from the Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Seth Teller from the Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and CSAIL, and David Barrett of Olin College. The team also includes a number of other faculty and students from MIT, a group of engineers from the C.S. Draper Laboratory, and a team of undergraduates from Olin College. Standings will be announced tomorrow once the scoring for the race is completed. Congratulations to team MIT and to all of the teams who participated in this historic event. 11/1/07 10:30am PT Team MIT has qualified for the DARPA Urban Challenge Finals! Qualifying for the finals is a tremendous achievement. We'd like to thank our team for all their hard work both at the National Qualifying Event and in the months it took to get there. The opening ceremony for the race is Friday with the main event to take place on Saturday. DARPA will be providing a live webcast of the event. We will be broadcasting the event in 32-G449 Saturday at 11:00am. Tune in and root for Team MIT! Team MIT was one of six vehicles to complete the autonomous vehicle DARPA Urban Challenge. The challenge consisted of three missions completed in one day. The course was over 60 miles long and ranged over paved and unpaved surfaces. Complex behaviors included parking, going through intersections, and traffic circles. Vehicles interacted both with each other and with manned cars throughout the course. Five vehicles were taken out of the race in the first mission. The teams that completed the race were the Stanford Racing Team, The Tartan Racing Team out of Carnegie Mellon University, Team Cornell, VictorTango based out of of Virginia Tech, The Ben Franklin Racing Team out of the Univ. of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University, and Team MIT. MIT's Grand Challenge team is led by four co-principal investigators: John Leonard from the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and CSAIL, Jonathan How from the Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Seth Teller from the Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and CSAIL, and David Barrett of Olin College. The team also includes a number of other faculty and students from MIT, a group of engineers from the C.S. Draper Laboratory, and a team of undergraduates from Olin College. Standings will be announced once the scoring for the race is completed. Congratulations to team MIT and to all of the teams who participated in this historic event. 10/29/07 10:30am PT Today's Area A test was on merging into traffic. The vehicle behaved too cautiously and failed to make use of enough of the available openings in traffic. As a result, the car did not complete as many laps as have some of our competitors. The team will review the logs and make some adjustments. The vehicle will be given another opportunity to pass the test on Wednesday. 10/28/07 10:00am PT The MIT Team vehicle had its Area C test at 9am this morning. The test involved Intersection precedence and reactions to road blocks. Seth Teller reports, "the vehicle seemed to do very well in all of the intersection precedence tests." The team will be working this afternoon getting ready for tomorrow's Area A test which involves going out into moving traffic. Merging and moving across oncoming traffic in straight-aways and around curbs. 10/27/07 3:15pm PT - MIT was one of only two teams out eleven to complete the Area B test on Saturday. The test featured lane following, navigation, obstacle avoidance, parking, signaling, and turning. The vehicle completed the test in 26 minutes. Team MIT was very excited by the results and is now heading back to download the log files for review. 10/26/07 11:30am PT - Friday started for the DARPA Urban Challenge Team with a sunrise opening ceremony with all teams present. "The Star Spangled Banner was sung just as the sun was coming up. It was quite beautiful", says CSAIL PI and vehicle Perception Team Lead Seth Teller. At 11am the team had a safety test and practice session. The vehicle performed flawlessly at the vehicle inspection and safety tests leaving them 20 minutes to practice on the course with more sophisticated behaviors. The vehicle performed well both in a narrow gauntlet of obstacles and in passing and parking behaviors. The team is looking forward to their first National Qualifying Event slot tomorrow 10/25/07 12:00pm PT - The MIT vehicle successfully passed the first half hour test session in the DARPA Urban Challenge National Qualification Event. The first test session involved a series of basic maneuvers designed to test the vehicle's ability to operate on the course. The vehicle performed emergency stops, turns, loops, at intersections, and at obstacle avoidance. No traffic was present on the course. The qualification event runs through next week with finalists announced on Thursday. 10/25/07 8:00am PT - Main generator thermal overload; may have been exacerbated by smoke particles from the nearby Santa Ana fires. Fortunately the team had a new replacement unit on hand. The car was moved over to a local Ford facility at 8pm last night and the team spent 6 hours replacing the generator. They tested the car from 2-4am and the vehicle is operational. After a few hours sleep the team was up again at 6am to move the car to Victorville, CA. They have a scheduled 11am start chute check to test the vehicles ability to leave the starting chute. 10/24/2007 - The DARPA Urban Challenge national qualification event begins on Friday. CSAIL PI and car Perception Team Lead Seth Teller reported today ." We are in our final day of pre-national qualification event testing at El Toro. We have completed several successful autonomous runs with no one in the car." Team MIT is one of 35 teams to progress to this phase of the competition. The national qualification event will run through next week with finalists announced on Thursday November first. 10/16/2007 - The MIT DARPA Grand Challenge Team car arrived safely in California on October 8th. Seth Teller reports, "The team is incredibly energized, the car is working fairly well, and things are coming together nicely. However there is an enormous amount of work left to do." 10/1/2007 - Members of CSAIL gathered for a barbeque lunch today to congratulate the members of the MIT DARPA Urban Challenge team and to wish them luck in the next phases of the competition. The MIT team has been chosen as one of 36 semi-finalists and will compete in the national qualifying event at the end of this month.

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News articles before the national qualifying event:

MIT Team Designs Autonomous Vehicle, The Tech, September 28, 2007 MIT Students Create Car That Drives Itself, BostonChannel.com, September 19, 2007 MIT Plans to Win DARPA Robot Car Challenge, Xconomy, September 4, 2007 MIT DARPA Grand Challenge Team progresses to semifinals, CSAIL Spotlight, August 9, 2007 Testing in the Heat, CSAIL Spotlight, August 7, 2007 Drivers Unwanted: MIT 'Robocar' takes a spin , MIT News Office, June 28, 2007 The pit crews behind DARPA's robot race, cnet News.com, June 5, 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge, CSAIL Spotlight, March 2, 2007 Runways aid in robotic vehicle research - Weymouth News, January 19, 2007