The second driverless car competition of the DARPA Grand Challenge was a 212 km (132 mi) off-road course that began at 6:40 am on October 8, 2005, near the California/Nevada state line. All but one of the 23 finalists in the 2005 race surpassed the 11.78 km (7.32 mi) distance completed by the best vehicle in the 2004 race. Five vehicles successfully completed the course:

Beer Bottle Pass

Vehicles in the 2005 race passed through three narrow tunnels and navigated more than 100 sharp left and right turns. The race concluded through Beer Bottle Pass, a winding mountain pass with sheer drop-offs on both sides. Although the 2004 course had required more elevation gain, and some very sharp switchbacks (Daggett Ridge) had been required near the beginning of the route, it had had far fewer curves and generally wider roads than the 2005 course.

The natural rivalry between the teams from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon (Sebastian Thrun, head of the Stanford team was previously a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon and colleague of Red Whittaker, head of the CMU team) was played out during the race. Mechanical problems plagued H1ghlander before it was passed by Stanley. Gray Team's entry was a miracle in itself, as the team from the suburbs of New Orleans was caught in Hurricane Katrina several months before the race. The fifth finisher, Terramax, a 30,000-pound entry from Oshkosh Truck, finished on the second day. The huge truck spent the night idling on the course and was particularly nimble in carefully picking its way down the narrow roads of Beer Bottle Pass.

National Qualification Event (NQE)

Of the original 195 applicants, initially 40 teams were selected to participate in the National Qualification Event (NQE). Three teams were added on Aug. 23, 2005 to the semi-finalist 40 teams who were selected from site visits, sending 43 teams to the NQE.

The National Qualification Event was held at California Speedway in Fontana from September 27 through October 5. The results of the NQE were used to cut the 43 teams down to 23 for the race on October 8.

Vehicle performances at the NQE were judged by (1) elapsed time to complete the course; (2) number of obstacles successfully passed without contact; (3) number of gates successfully passed. DARPA did not reveal the relative importance of these three factors. DARPA's final ranking of the vehicles, for purposes of pole position in the Grand Challenge Event (GCE), may have been partly subjective.

The results of the 2005 DARPA NQEs are shown below sorted top to bottom by runs completed and gates passed, compiled from DARPA's published NQE results. This ordering does not correspond to DARPA's ranking of team performance. (For example, this ordering does not reflect speed as an element of performance.) Teams highlighted in green were the teams that DARPA selected to participate in the Grand Challenge desert race.

There were four NQE runs. The above four major columns are sorted from worst to best runs of each team. "Time" signifies the time in minutes for a completed run and "x" indicates an incomplete run. "Gates" indicates the number of gates along the track that were passed (there were 50 total per run). "Obstacles" indicates the number of obstacles on the track that were passed (there were 5 total per run). "Finishes" indicates the total number of runs that the team successfully completed (there were 4 runs total). "Total Gates" indicates the total number of gates that the team successfully passed. The teams are sorted from top to bottom according to runs completed and then by total gates passed. Teams indicated as a "desert race participant" are those teams invited by DARPA to participate in the Grand Challenge desert race. Source data

For the first and second run, only 4 obstacles were present whereas for the third and fourth runs 5 obstacles were present. The NQE results presented in the table above show each team's runs sorted left to right from their worst run to their best run in order to better illustrate relative ranking (i.e. not in order of the actual run sequence). The ranking of who was accepted into the Grand Challenge desert race seems to be driven by number of gates passed. Beyond that, it is not known what criteria DARPA used to qualify the participants as acceptance was seemingly driven by decision of the Chief Judge.

On October 6, the selected teams transported their robots to the starting location. On October 7 the teams had a day to fix any portions of the robots broken in the course of transportation prior to the actual race.

Race

A Google Talk video about the DARPA 2005 race is available at YouTube

The route to be followed by the robots was supplied to the teams two hours before the start as a computer file with GPS coordinates, one every 72 m (236 ft) of the route, with more frequent waypoints in difficult patches. Some teams used topographic maps and aerial imagery to manually map out and program precise path and speed settings. Once the race had started, the robots were not allowed to contact humans in any way.

Each robot started at a different time and was "paused" for different amounts of time during the race; DARPA compensated for the staggered start times and subtracted the pause time from each robot's total to derive its final official time. The $2 million prize was awarded on Sunday, October 9, 2005.

The 2005 competitors were much more successful than those of 2004; only one failed to pass the 11.84 km (7.36 mi) mark set by the best-performing 2004 entry, Sandstorm. By the end, 18 robots had been disabled and five robots finished the course. On the first day, Stanley from Stanford University, and H1ghlander and Sandstorm from Carnegie Mellon University, finished within minutes of each other, with Stanley crossing the finish line first. Kat-5 from Gray Team started much later, but finished in a comparable time. The race paused overnight with one competitor, TerraMax, left on the course at mile 83; TerraMax had the stage to itself on Sunday as it belatedly rumbled home.

The winner of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge was Stanley, with a course time of 6 hours 53 minutes and 8 seconds (6:53:08) with average speed of 30.7 km/h (19.1 mph). CMU's Sandstorm followed with 7:04:50 at 29.9 km/h (18.6 mph) and H1ghlander at 7:14:00 at 29.3 km/h (18.2 mph). Gray Team's Kat-5 came through at 7:30:16 with average speed of 28.2 km/h (17.5 mph). Oshkosh Truck's Terramax finished at 12:51 and would not have been eligible for the prize because it exceeded the ten-hour limit.

The Official Website (requires Flash player plugin) contained a map and positions of the competitors, while TG Daily posted a running summary of the day's events.

Race participants

DNF = did not finish

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to DARPA Grand Challenge 2005.