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GCN Home > 08/06/07 issue

Drive time

SPECIAL REPORT | DARPA goes downtown for its robotic-vehicle challenge, with soldiers’ safety in mind

By John Rendleman, GCN Staff

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s competition for autonomous vehicles has seen great leaps forward in its first two incarnations. This year, the ride could get rather bumpy, as the Grand Challenge moves from the expanses of the desert to the mean streets of the city.

The competition, called the Urban Challenge for 2007, is no mere sporting event. DARPA’s goal is to use the challenge to help develop technologies for self-guiding military vehicles that could reduce the deadly toll of vehicular-related battlefield casualties among U.S. military personnel.

Approximately half the U.S. soldiers killed to date in Iraq have died in enemy attacks on vehicles, whether by live enemy fire or by improvised explosive devices or, to a lesser extent, in vehicular accidents.

Based on results from the two previous Grand Challenges and a preliminary look at the entrants in DARPA’s Urban Challenge contest now under way, “we think that over time we will be able to build vehicles that will be able to drive as well as humans in certain situations,” said Norman Whitaker, program manager for DARPA’s Urban Challenge.

In May, DARPA trimmed the roster of teams competing in the Urban Challenge from 89 to 53 and will further narrow the field to 30 semifinalists this week based on scores issued during site visits DARPA officials have been conducting since May. The agency also will name this week the location of the competition’s Qualification Event scheduled for Oct. 26 to 31 and the location for the final contest Nov. 3.

To date, DARPA has said only that both events would take place in the western United States, although its placement in a simulated urban combat zone has become the theme of this year’s contest and considerably upped the ante for the level of vehicle proficiency that will be required to successfully complete the contest’s 60-mile course in six hours.

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