DARPA Grand Challenge 2005

You have probably already heard that The Stanford University team won the $2 million Darpa Grand Challenge this year with their VW Robot 'Stanley.'


The results of the challenge show that it does not take much to solve some problems. It is only the second year of the challenge and the results this year are dramatically different than last.
Of the 23 teams that started the race, five of them completed it. Congratualtions to them all. They are probably kicking themselves for not running it just a little faster. It would probably just take a small tweek to get most of these five teams to improve their times.

It may only take a small tweek for many of the other teams to finish the course. Almost all of the teams made it farther than ten miles. Two other teams made it more than half way.

This contest shows that it is not necessary to have a major technological breakthrough in order to accomplish some very complex tasks.
It only takes the incentive and the efforts of a motivated team.

I hope they continue the challenge. They could make the course more complicated. And I bet the robots will run much faster next year.
Eventually the ideas in the brains of these robots will be included in our cars.

DARPA Grand Challenge 2005