DARPA Grand Challenge (2004) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Announced in 2002, the first DARPA Grand Challenge

DARPA Grand Challenge

The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for driverless vehicles, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the most prominent research organization of the United States Department of Defense...

was a driverless car

Driverless car

An autonomous car, also known as robotic or informally as driverless, is an autonomous vehicle capable of fulfilling the human transportation capabilities of a traditional car. As an autonomous vehicle, it is capable of sensing its environment and navigating on its own...

competition held on March 13, 2004 in the Mojave Desert

Mojave Desert

The Mojave Desert occupies a significant portion of southeastern California and smaller parts of central California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona, in the United States...

region of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, along a 150 miles (241.4 km) route that follows along the path of Interstate 15

Interstate 15

Interstate 15 is the fourth-longest north–south Interstate Highway in the United States, traveling through the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and Montana from San Diego to the Canadian border...

from just before Barstow, California

Barstow, California

Barstow is a city in San Bernardino County, California, United States. The population was 22,639 at the 2010 census, up from 21,119 at the 2000 census. Barstow is located north of San Bernardino....

to just past the California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

-Nevada

Nevada

Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...

border in Primm

Primm, Nevada

Primm is a tiny community in Clark County, Nevada, United States, primarily notable for its position straddling Interstate 15 where it crosses the border between California and Nevada...

.
None of the robot vehicles finished the route. The vehicle of Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

's Red Team traveled the farthest distance, completing 11.78 km (7.3 mi) of the course. The $1 million prize remained unclaimed.

Preliminary tests

Prior to the main event in the Mojave Desert

Mojave Desert

, the twenty-one qualifying teams were required to navigate a mile-long obstacle course at California Speedway

California Speedway

Auto Club Speedway is a two-mile , low-banked, D-shaped oval superspeedway in Fontana, California which has hosted NASCAR racing annually since 1997. The track was also used for open wheel racing events until 2005. The racetrack is located near the former locations of Ontario Motor Speedway and...

. Seven teams were able to successfully complete the entire course, while eight others almost completed a portion of the course to the satisfaction of the judges, resulting in fifteen vehicles allowed to start the final race.

The event

Unfortunately, the failures of the vehicles 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; one car flipped upside down in the starting area and had to be withdrawn. Three hours into the event that was scheduled to last ten hours, only four vehicles remained operational. The vehicles that failed suffered from a variety of mechanical problems: "stuck brakes, broken axles, rollovers, and malfunctioning satellite navigation equipment."

Within a few hours, all of the vehicles in the challenge had suffered critical vehicle failures, had been disqualified, or had withdrawn. The farthest any of the teams had gotten was the Red Team's 7.4 miles (11.9 km), less than 5% off the full length of the course. Their vehicle Sandstorm

Sandstorm (vehicle)

Sandstorm is an autonomous vehicle. Created by Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team, it is a heavily modified 1986 M998 HMMWV. It competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004 and 2005.Sandstorm qualified in first position in the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge...

went off-course in a hairpin turn and got stuck on the embankment. The next farthest vehicles were those of the SciAutonics II Team, which traversed 6.7 miles (10.8 km) before becoming stuck on an embankment; Digital Auto Drive, which drove 6 miles (9.7 km) before getting stuck on a rock; and the Golem Group, which made it 5.2 miles (8.4 km) before getting trapped on a steep hill.

The results

Although the initial race was deemed a failure due to no vehicles even achieving anything close to the goal, DARPA had committed to running the challenge again for as long as Congressional authority allowed (which would have run to 2007, but the goal was reached in 2005).

The first Grand Challenge is considered by some to be a success in any event, merely on the basis that it has spurred interest and innovation. The requisite logic dictates that, as long as overall forward progress is being made, the program is a success.

In addition to the difficulty many vehicles had with the harsh terrain, a critical problem many initial designs had concerned the inability to handle two distinct problems simultaneously: sensing upcoming obstacles and following the GPS waypoints. 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 again the next year, taking the lessons that they learned from the 2004 event and applying them to their designs.