UF robotic car may compete for big prize in DARPA grand challenge

September 9, 2005

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida team that created a fully robotic car leaves Sunday for California, where it will vie for a spot to compete in a race with similar cars for a $2 million prize.

Team CIMAR is a collaborative effort among the University of Florida’s Center for Intelligent Machines and Robotics, Autonomous Solutions Inc. and The Eigenpoint Company. The team is one of 43 teams remaining from an initial field of 200 teams from across the country. It will compete in the national qualifying events for the Oct. 8 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, Grand Challenge race across the Mojave Desert. Qualifying events will be held from Sept. 27 to Oct. 5 at the California Speedway in Fontana.

Twenty teams will emerge from the qualifying events to compete in the Grand Challenge. The event was created in response to a federal mandate to accelerate research and development in fully robotic, or autonomous, ground vehicles that will help save U.S. troops’ lives on the battlefield.

The challenge requires autonomous cars to drive themselves up to 175 miles over torturous desert terrain featuring natural and man-made obstacles such as ditches, cliffs, boulders, open water, underpasses and other vehicles. The specific route will not be given to teams until two hours before the event begins. The team that develops a vehicle that finishes the designated route most quickly and within 10 hours will win the $2 million prize.

“We have an outside chance to win this year,” said Dave Armstrong, project manager for Team CIMAR. “It’s been a fantastic experience, and the team is thrilled to have gotten this far.”

Although the team competed in the inaugural DARPA Grand Challenge in March 2004, no one came close to winning the event, which required the cars to complete a 142-mile course from near Los Angeles to near Las Vegas across the Mojave Desert. The farthest distance reached in 2004 was seven miles of the course. The UF team came in eighth after traveling just under one mile.

Armstrong said that while the 2004 competition was a last-minute effort, the team has been working around the clock since then to build a completely new robot called the NaviGATOR for this year’s competition.

NaviGATOR resembles a decked-out dune buggy but has capabilities that could possibly change the future of unmanned ground vehicles. While current unmanned ground vehicles rely on a person to operate the vehicle remotely, NaviGATOR operates without any human intervention.

NaviGATOR’s 10 computers gather and interpret information from numerous onboard navigation and hazard-avoidance technologies, including Global Position and Inertial Navigation systems, radar, lasers, cameras and infrared sensors. The information is then sent to automatic controls that brake, accelerate and steer the vehicle.

Team CIMAR’s thousands of hours of labor were nearly thwarted after an accident during testing last week.

NaviGATOR was cruising at 28 mph when it crashed into a ditch, causing the shocks to break and sending the engine through the drive shaft. Many custom-built parts were broken, and the team spent many sleepless hours trying to fix the vehicle before their departure for California.

“Our biggest problem is time,” Armstrong said. “We really need another six months to test the vehicle, but we aren’t going to get it.”

The team leaves Sunday so its members will have a couple of weeks to test the vehicle in the rough terrain and desert heat. “Running the switchbacks of the desert roads is risky business but necessary to train the robot to ‘think’ its way through the tough spots,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong said it is likely that more than one team will finish this year, so the race will come down to speed. DARPA has set speed limits on each segment of the course, the top speed being 50 mph. Armstrong said if they are able to get the robot to perform as expected, they will push it to the speed limit for the entire route.

The team has invested about $250,000 in cash and donated equipment in NaviGATOR. The total cost of the project would be more than $1 million if the costs of engineering labor were considered. If the team wins the competition, the $2 million prize will be divided among UF and the team’s sponsors.