Wednesday, April 20, 2005

TerraMax

OSHKOSH TRUCK’S SELF-NAVIGATING ROBOTIC TRUCK ADVANCES IN QUALIFYING FOR DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE’S DARPA GRAND CHALLENGE

OSHKOSH, WIS. (April 12, 2005) – Oshkosh Truck Corporation [NYSE: OSK] announced today that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has chosen the company’s TerraMaxTM robotic vehicle for evaluation for the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 -- a 175-mile, off-road race in the Mojave Desert for completely autonomous vehicles. Of 195 teams originally submitting race entries, DARPA, a part of the Department of Defense, chose 118 for further review based on vehicle designs and capabilities.


TerraMax

DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 is a field test of autonomous (driverless) ground vehicles to promote the advance of autonomous vehicle technology. Teams vying to compete in the Grand Challenge develop their vehicles without government funding. By 2015, the Pentagon hopes that using autonomous military vehicles such as TerraMax will help save the lives of military personnel.

In May, DARPA personnel will evaluate the autonomous capabilities of each of the 118 qualifying vehicles on-site, including their ability to follow GPS navigation and avoid obstacles. Only 40 teams will advance to DARPA’s National Qualifying Event (NQE) in Fontana, Calif., in September. Of these, the top 20 teams will advance to the Grand Challenge on Oct. 8, 2005. The team whose autonomous vehicle completes the Grand Challenge route the fastest within 10 hours will win $2 million.


TerraMax

In 2004, TerraMax was one of only seven entries to complete the 1.3-mile qualifying course for the Grand Challenge. The platform for TerraMax is Oshkosh’s combat-proven Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement (MTVR), which was originally built for the U.S. Marine Corps and has been used extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the 2005 Grand Challenge, TerraMax has been given rear-wheel steering for improved manueverability.

TerraMax.com






TerraMax – In The news

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