DARPA Grand Challenge Web site
"Intercepts: DARPA's Cannonball Run"
Race
Each robot started at a different time and was "paused" for different amounts of time during the race; DARPA compensated for the staggered start times and subtracted the pause time from each robot's total to derive its final official time. The $2 million prize was awarded on Sunday October 9th, 2005.
The 2005 competitors were much more successful than those of 2004; only one failed to pass the 7.36-mile mark set by the best-performing 2004 entry, Sandstorm. By the end, 18 robots had been disabled and five robots finished the course. On the first day, Stanley from Stanford University, and H1ghlander and Sandstorm from Carnegie Mellon University, finished within minutes of each other, with Stanley crossing the finish line first. Kat-5 from Gray Team started much later, but finished in a comparable time. The race paused overnight with one competitor, TerraMax, left on the course at mile 83; TerraMax had the stage to itself on Sunday as it belatedly rumbled home.
The winner of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge was Stanley, with a course time of 6 hours 53 minutes and 8 seconds (6:53:08) with average speed of 19.1 MPH. CMU's Sandstorm followed with 7:04:50 at 18.6 MPH and H1ghlander at 7:14:00 at 18.2 MPH. Gray Team's Kat-5 came through at 7:30:16 with average speed of 17.5. Oshkosh Truck's Terramax finished at 12:51 and would not have been eligible for the prize because it exceeded the ten-hour limit.
The Official Website (requires Macromedia Flash player plugin) contained a map and positions of the competitors, while TG Daily posted a running summary of the day's events.
Race Participants
Vehicle | Team Name | Team Home | Time Taken (h:m) |
Result |
---|---|---|---|---|
Stanley | Stanford Racing Team | Stanford U., Palo Alto, Calif. | 6:54 | First place |
Sandstorm | Red Team | Carnegie Mellon U., Pittsburgh, PA | 7:05 | Second place |
H1ghlander | Red Team Too | Carnegie Mellon U., Pittsburgh, PA | 7:14 | Third place |
Kat-5 | Team Gray | The Gray Insurance Company, Metairie, La. | 7:30 | Fourth place |
TerraMax | Team TerraMax | Oshkosh Truck Company, Oshkosh, Wisconsin | 12:51 | Over 10 hour limit |
DEXTER | Team ENSCO | ENSCO, Inc., Springfield, Va. | DNF | Out of race at 81 miles; tire blowout after going off-course due to bent frame |
Spirit | Axion Racing | Westlake Village, Calif. | DNF | Out of race at 66 miles; got stuck in sand, possibly after mechanical failure in suspension |
Cliff | Virginia Tech Grand Challenge Team | Virginia Tech., Blacksburg, Va. | DNF | Out of race at 44 miles |
Rocky | Virginia Tech Team Rocky | Virginia Tech., Blacksburg, Va. | DNF | Out of race at 39 miles; a steep hill caused the oil in its generator to slosh around. The generator's low-oil sensor went off, cutting power to computers. |
ION | Desert Buckeyes | Ohio State U., Columbus, Ohio | DNF | Out of race at 29 miles |
DAD | Team DAD | Digital Auto Drive/Velodyne Acoustics, Morgan Hill, Calif. | DNF | Out of race at 26 miles; LIDAR scanner failed, loose wire due to vibration. |
Desert Rat | Insight Racing | NC State U., Cary, N.C. | DNF | Out of race at 26 miles |
Xboxx | Mojavaton | Grand Junction, Col. | DNF | Out of race at 23.5 miles |
Golem 2 | The Golem Group/UCLA | Los Angeles, Calif. | DNF | Out of race at 22 miles; software bug crashed main computer causing 60mph rampage |
CajunBot | Team Cajunbot | U. of LA, Lafayette, La. | DNF | Out of race at 17 miles; The motor on the brake actuator burned out when vehicle was paused for about fifty minutes. |
RASCAL | SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering | Thousand Oaks, Calif. | DNF | Out of race at 16 miles; software problems |
Desert Tortoise | Intelligent Vehicle Safety Technologies | Littleton, Col. | DNF | Out of race at 14 miles, instability in steering controller caused robot to drive offroad for a power pole. |
NaviGATOR | Team CIMAR | U. of FL, Gainesville, Florida | DNF | Out of race at 14 miles; lost control pushing speed past known tolerances. |
Prospect 11 | Princeton University | Princeton U., N.J. | DNF | Out of race at 10 miles |
Spider | Team Cornell | Cornell U., Ithaca, N.Y. | DNF | Out of race at 9 miles; when pause applied, rolled up against a guard rail; when unpaused, could not back away from rail since it had no functional backing software |
Alice | Team Caltech | Calif. Inst. of Tech., Pasadena, Calif. | DNF | Out of race at 8 miles; after GPS reacquisition, veered over barrier and towards media |
JackBot | MonsterMoto | Cedar Park, Texas | DNF | Out of race at 7 miles |
The Meteor | Mitre Meteorites | MITRE Corp., McLean, Va. | DNF | Out of race at 1 mile; dust interfered with sensors causing false positive obstacle detection |