Announced in 2002, the first DARPA Grand Challenge was a driverless car competition held on March 13, 2004, in the Mojave Desert region of the United States. The route followed Interstate 15 from right before Barstow, California to just past the California-Nevada border in Primm. None of the robot vehicles finished the route. The vehicle of Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team traveled the furthest distance, completing of the course. The $1 million prize remained unclaimed.
Preliminary tests
Prior to the main event in the Mojave Desert, the twenty-one qualifying teams were required to navigate a mile-long obstacle course at California Speedway. Seven teams were able to successfully finish the entire course, while eight others completed enough of it to satisfy the judges, resulting in fifteen vehicles making it to the final race."The robots were put through obstacle and speed tests to make sure they would be safe. While only seven teams completed the speedway course, eight others came close enough to convince judges that they could safely compete."
The event Unfortunately, the failures during the preliminary tests were indicative of how the vehicles would perform on the actual course. Two of the fifteen vehicles had to be withdrawn before the final race began. Another vehicle also had to be withdrawn because it flipped upside down in the starting area. Three hours into the event which was scheduled to last ten hours, only four vehicles remained operational. The vehicles suffered from a variety of mechanical problems, including "stuck brakes, broken axles, rollovers, and malfunctioning satellite navigation equipment."
Within a few hours, all of the vehicles in the challenge had suffered critical failures, had been disqualified, or had withdrawn. The furthest any of the teams got was the Red Team's , less than 5% off the full length of the course. Their vehicle, Sandstorm, went off-course in a hairpin turn and got stuck on the embankment. The next furthest vehicles were those of the SciAutonics II Team, which traversed before becoming stuck on an embankment; Team DAD (Digital Auto Drive), which drove before getting stuck on a rock; and the Golem Group, which made it before becoming trapped on a steep hill.
The results
Although the initial race was deemed a failure, as no vehicles achieved anything close to the goal, DARPA was committed to running the challenge for as long as Congressional authority allowed (which would have been until 2007, but the goal was reached in 2005). The first Grand Challenge is considered by some to be a success, mainly because it spurred interest and innovation.
In addition to the difficulty most vehicles had with the harsh terrain, many initial designs also struggled to handle both sensing upcoming obstacles and following the GPS waypoints simultaneously. DARPA Grand Challenge deputy program manager Tom Strat said, "some of the vehicles were able to follow the GPS waypoints very accurately; but were not able to sense obstacles ahead....Other vehicles were very good at sensing obstacles, but had difficulty following waypoints or were scared of their own shadow, hallucinating obstacles when they weren't there."
Several teams returned the next year, learning from the 2004 event and updating their designs.
Alumni of the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge include Kyle Vogt, co-founder of self-driving car company Cruise.
References
External links
Official sites The home page of the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge DGC-2004 Teams
TV & Video coverage NOVA: The Great Robot Race
Press Coverage The Register: Final robot grunts picked for $1million DARPA race The Register: DARPA's Grand Challenge proves to be too grand CNN.com: Robots fail to complete Grand Challenge SFGate.com: Robot race suffers quick, ignoble end 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge Image Gallery 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge in Spanish
Popular Mechanics article on the DARPA Grand Challenge. Popular Science article on the DARPA Grand Challenge. Scientific American article on the DARPA Grand Challenge. NOVA: The Great Robot Race
Team Sites American Industrial Magic Autonomous Vehicle Engineers (Team AVE) Autonomous Vehicle Systems (semi-finalist 2005) (semi-finalist 2004, 2005) Armani (dead link, leave for history) Austin Robot Technology (semi-finalist 2005) Axion Racing (finalist 2004, 2005) BJB Engineering (semi-finalist 2005) Blue Revolution Racing(dead link, leave for history) BYUc (New team 2007) Blue Team (finalist 2004; semi-finalist 2005) CarOLO Cornell DARPA Team (finalist 2005) CyberRider (semi-finalist 2004, 2005) Desert Buckeyes (2004, finalist 2005) FutureNowa Grand Challenge Autonomous Race Team Gray Team (finisher 2005) The Golem Group (finalist 2004, 2005)Highlander Racing Insight Racing (semi-finalist 2004; finalist 2005) KNetX Maximum Exposure (dead link, leave for history) Mech I.Q. (dead link, leave for history) MonsterMoto JackBot (finalist 2005) MITRE Meteorites (finalist 2005) Oregon WAVE (semi-finalist 2005) The Palos Verdes High School Road Warriors (finalist 2004; semi-finalist 2005) Princeton University (finalist 2005) The Prodigies Red Team (finalist 2004; finisher 2005) Red Team Too (finisher 2005) ROVER SYSTEMS (semi-finalist 2004) R Junk Works Stanford Racing Team (winner 2005) Sting Racing at Georgia Tech (new team 2007) SciAutonics (finalist 2004, 2005) SciAutonics II (finalist 2004) Tartan Racing (New CMU Team) Team 1010Delta (dead link, leave for history) Team Aggie Spirit - UC Davis (dead link, leave for history) Team Arctic Tortoise (semi-finalist 2004) Team Blue Revolution (dead link, leave for history) Team CajunBot (finalist 2004, 2005)Team Tormenta (semi-finalist 2005) Team Cal Poly Team Caltech (finalist 2004, 2005) Team Case (Combined with Team ENSCO) Team CIMAR (finalist 2004, 2005) Team Cybernet (2007 Site Visit Qualified) Team ENSCO (finalist 2004, 2005) Team Go It Alone Team Jefferson (semi-finalist 2005) Team Mexico (new team 2007) Team Overbot (semi-finalist 2004, 2005) Team Rambo (dead link, leave for history) Team Remote-I Team Scorpion Team South Carolina (dead link, leave for history) Team Terramax (finalist 2004; finisher 2005) Team Thunderbird - UBC Team Underdawg Team Visionary Endeavor -- Fox Valley Technical College UCF Team Knightrider Viva Las Vegas (dead link, leave for history) Virginia Tech Grand Challenge Team Rocky (finalist 2005) Virginia Tech Grand Challenge Team Cliff (finalist 2004, 2005)