The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is hosting a robotics competition in Victorville, CA on November 3 called the DARPA Urban Challenge in which twenty autonomous vehicles are required to navigate traffic while respecting the rules of the road. An elimination phase called the National Qualifying Event has been underway this week in order to select the final twenty teams of thirty five that were invited to participate. Today marks the final day that the teams can impress the judges with their technical and navigational prowess to prove that they are worthy to compete in Saturday’s final competition.
According to a press release from Austin Robot Technology, a team still in contention, the following twelve teams have been eliminated:
- Mojavation
- Team Caltech
- Team Jefferson
- Team Urbanator
- Gator Nation
- Team Juggernaut
- Georgia Tech / SAIC Sting Racing
- Ody-Era
- SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering
- Team Berlin
- University of Utah
- Princeton
Four teams have already met the criteria for participating in the finals and are “sitting pretty,” according to the press release:
- Team Cornell
- Stanford Racing Team
- Tartan Racing (Carnegie Mellon)
- VictorTango (Virginia Tech)
This leaves the following 19 teams in contention for the remaining 16 positions:
- OSU-ACT
- Team UCF
- Insight Racing
- Intelligent Vehicle Systems
- The Golem Group
- Team Oshkosh Truck
- Axion Racing
- Team CajunBot
- Team Case
- Team Gray
- Austin Robot Technology
- Team Autonomous Solutions
- Team-LUX
- Team Cybernet
- Team AnnieWay
- CarOLD
- Avantguardium
- Ben Franklin Racing Team
- MIT
The eliminated teams undoubtedly spent hundreds, if not thousands, of man-hours in preparing for the qualifications and that effort does not go unnoticed, especially with DARPA officials. “DARPA congratulates these teams for making it to the semifinals, and salutes them for their contributions to developing autonomous robotic ground vehicle technology that will someday save lives on the battlefield,” said DARPA.
As a former finalist I’m sure that the remaining teams have not been getting much sleep or many showers. They’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars, maxed-out credit cards, intangible debts like missed birthdays, anniversaries, and school days invested in their robots. Robot Central gratefully salutes their answering DARPA’s call to arms and wishes them the best in today’s trials.
The final 20 will be announced tomorrow. Robot Central will be there.
