If you had checked www.grandchallenge.org on November 3rd you would have seen something quite spectacular – 11 completely autonomous cars , meaning no human input, stopping at stop signs, using their turn signals, and parallel parking without hitting the curb while driving around a fairly large and empty town.  Each car had to complete three missions within a 6 hour time limit.  The cars were judged based on the amount of time it took them to complete their tasks, but penalties for reckless driving and other mistakes were also taken into account.

The day after the race, judges announced that Tartan Racing had officially won the challenge and would receive the $2,000,000 cash prize.  According to the press release announcing this victory, Boss, a heavily modified Chevy Tahoe, "followed California driving laws as it navigated the course and that it operated in a safe and stable manner."  Stanford's team came in second, receiving a  $1,000,000 prize, and Virginia Tech netted $500,000 by taking 3rd place.  Boss didn't come in as an underdog; DARPA had declared Boss the top-rated robot in the event based on its performance in the qualifying rounds.

The competition is run and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).  It is hoped that these automated cars will save lives on the battle field by taking humans out of the picture as often as possible.  For instance, it would be better to have an unmanned supply truck than to put soldiers in potentially dangerous situations. There is also obvious potential for these cars in civilian settings as consumer products.

Tartan Racing includes Carnegie Mellon faculty, staff and students from the School of Computer Science's Robotics Institute, as well as Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering. It received major support from General Motors, Caterpillar and Continental AG. Strengthening the team were engineers from GM, Caterpillar, Continental and Intel who were embedded with the team in Pittsburgh.  To learn more about the team, check out their web site at www.tartanracing.org.

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