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The Bots Came Back: DARPA Grand Challenge 2005

Whenever I go out into the desert to look around, I always run across one of three basic humanoid groups: geeks, grunts, or gearheads. The geeks are there because scientists are often banished to the howling desiccated wilds to carry out their explosive or radioactive experiments or to simulate life on other planets. The grunts are there because large arid expanses are perfect places for soldiers to drop bombs, play war games, and even fight real wars. And gearheads have been fans of dry lake beds ever since cars were invented because they are free of radar guns and traffic lights.

Usually, these varieties of mostly male humans are found in distinct cliques, but last weekend saw an unusual summit out behind Buffalo Bill’s casino in Primm (about forty miles south of Las Vegas). At dawn on Saturday, October 8th, the first contender in the second (click here for the first) DARPA Grand Challenge jumped out of the starting chute and headed off into the desert on a 132-mile run. About seven hours later, the blue Volkwagen Touareg named Stanley was back. While its designers were still wet with celebratory ice water and Red Bull, the contest’s organizers were likening Stanley’s achievement to the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk. The Grand Challenge had been met, they said, and new pages had been added to history books.

Just what was the “grand challenge” that brought geek, grunt, and gearhead to the desert? Simple and sweet: Design a vehicle that can navigate a 132-mile course over dirt roads, paved roads, dry lake beds, sand, and rock. There will be switchbacks, cliffs, and unforeseen obstacles. There will be tunnels and cattle guards. Most importantly of all, there will be no driver. We’re not talking “remote control,” either. The thing has to think for itself using information from GPS, lasers, and other sensing equipment. Oh, yeah, and to win the $2 million prize, the course must be completed in ten hours or less. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, dreamed up the “Grand Challenge” as a way to meet a congressional mandate to supply the armed forces with autonomous vehicles by the year 2015. This made the event even more unusual — tax dollars were funding a robot race.

Twenty-three robotic vehicles qualified to run the final course last Saturday. They were the best performers at the National Qualifying Event held at the Fontana Motor Speedway the week before. Several had participated in the first Grand Challenge held eighteen months ago. In that race, the best performer, a red Humvee from Pittsburgh, completed only eight miles before getting tangled in barbed wire. Another “bot,” a sixteen-ton Oshkosh truck named TerraMax, was brought to an early halt by a threatening creosote bush. Both these contenders were back, along with several others whose teams were sure they had conquered the challenge of teaching a truck to know the difference between a boulder and a tumbleweed.

I drove down to Primm Friday night to check out the bots and pick out my favorites. The big question in those final hours was, “Does anybody have a chance of finishing?” No one could forget about the last race, when not one bot finished even 10% of the course. While I lack the background to do serious handicapping, I thought Stanley the blue Touareg looked good, and the two red Humvees from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh appeared very well equipped. I also liked a white pickup truck that belonged to the UCLA-sponsored Golem Group and Cornell University’s “Spider.” My favorite, though, was the chartreuse six-wheeled Oshkosh truck TerraMax. If it had been to the wizard and picked up enough courage to face off a creosote bush during the past year, nothing could stop it.

If the trappings of sponsorship count for anything, a red Humvee named H1ghlander was a clear winner. The team had scored a CART racer among its backers, which meant it had a full race team enclave set up, complete with a big tent and fancy RV, all decorated with Target logos. Stanley the blue Touareg had Red Bull behind it, which also meant a cute tent and attractive talent serving drinks. Axion Racing’s “Spirit” had two leggy blonde babes in skimpy outfits on its team. Mostly, however, the teams were humbler gatherings of Levi-clad geeks in Winnegabos and rent-a-trucks.

DARPA, with the aid of Buffalo Bill’s, had set up several large tents. The biggest one was equipped with a number of plasma screens ready to display statistics and video feeds from cameras set up along the route. Another had a fancy three-dimensional map that displayed the location of each robot in real time as it moved along the course. The most difficult challenge was supposed to be Beer Bottle Pass, which was a narrow set of switchbacks with a steep cliff on one side.

I had to get up at three to make it back down to Primm in time to watch the geeks and gearheads get their bots ready for the race. At 3:30 or so, race officials gave each team a CD upon which was burned the information the bots needed to follow the course. The pit area was quiet as I walked through — all the activity was taking place on glowing laptops as the masters gave final instruction to their slaves.

A spectacular desert dawn finally lit up the sky. A country singer sang the national anthem, and the official DARPA announcer reminded the crowd that had assembled on the portable grandstand that we were about to see history being made. Then, at short intervals, the bots took off. Having earned the pole position at the qualifying event, Stanford’s Stanley was first.

Each robot had a DARPA “chase” truck that stayed with it the whole time it was on the course. The DARPA guys inside were responsible for keeping tabs on the robot and making sure it didn’t do anything dangerous. This turned out to be a good precaution. About four miles into the course, the route curved back near the starting gates and ran along a berm which had been set up as a photo point for journalists. It was a good spot for pictures, because when the bots sensed they were on a straightaway, they sped up. I got some good pictures of accelerating robot cars shooting out dusty rooster tails.

Either Caltech’s robotic van “Alice” was misguided or she didn’t like the press. When she rounded the corner, she headed straight for the berm and stepped on the gas. Alice stormed the hill and shoved a concrete barrier aside before the guys in the “chase” truck killed her.

Other mishaps caused all but five robots to drop out before the finish line. Some got stuck. One had a flat tire. The Golem Group’s white pickup had a memory problem and ended its run with a sixty-mile-an-hour off-road flameout. Cornell’s Spider tried to jump off a bridge.

Because they couldn’t be with their bots, team members huddled around the plasma screens, especially when the first robot reached the treacherous Beer Bottle Pass. As I watched Stanley disappear out of camera view, I couldn’t help thinking about Apollo space ships disappearing behind the moon. Would the bot reemerge, or would it plunge permanently out of sight into a rocky gorge? When Stanley chugged around the corner back into view, even the most jaded old reporters cheered right along with all the geeks in blue shirts. In fact, the entire giant tent erupted in a cheer worthy of a U.S. hockey victory over Russia.

I saw three robots finish the race: Stanley was first, with Carnegie-Mellon’s red Hummers, Sandstorm and H1ghlander, in close pursuit. A while later, a gray Ford Escape sponsored by the Gray Insurance Company also made it over the line. One other robot, however, was still on the course at sundown. TerraMax, the big chartreuse truck, was slow but still alive.

Even though TerraMax could no longer finish within the ten-hour time limit, DARPA decided to let the truck “pause” overnight on the route. At daybreak, the big bot was reawakened. I couldn’t make it back down to Buffalo Bill’s to watch in real life, but DARPA kept the Grand Challenge Web site updated in real time. I let out a virtual hooray as I watched a green dot slide over a digital finish line around noon.

Is a robot race a good use of tax dollars? Was the DARPA Grand Challenge as important as the Wright brothers’ flight? Will robotic vehicles become ordinary within the next decade? We’ll have to wait for the answers to those questions, but I’m well qualified to say that the race was the best desert entertainment I’ve ever seen, and I wasn’t even on the media berm when Alice ran amok.

Relevant Links:
DARPA Grand Challenge (Event Coverage)
DARPA Grand Challenge (Official Site)
RoadTrip America’s Coverage of the National Qualifying Event
RoadTrip America’s Coverage of the 2005 Race
RoadTrip America’s Robot Expert on why the winners won
RoadTrip America’s Coverage of the 2004 Race

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