Despite Mixed Results, DARPA Planning Second Grand Challenge

by Terry Costlow

While the recent DARPA Grand Challenge failed to produce an outright “winner” — none of the autonomous vehicles completed more than a fraction of the race — the technology presented and publicity generated were more than DARPA managers expected. In fact, DARPA is already planning a second race that promises an even larger prize.

“We’ve just been approved to $2 million,” said Col. Jose Negron, program manager of the Grand Challenge 2004. DARPA will hold the next race in October 2005.

DARPA officials considered the first Challenge to have been so successful that they anticipate designing other contests to attract new participants in other technical areas. “I expect to see more challenges out there. [They] focus people on what you want done and [they’re] fun to do,” Negron said. And although he’s glad DARPA increased the reward, “people were not after the $1 million,” he said. “It was more about having their name out as among the first to complete the Grand Challenge.”

DARPA managers are looking forward to solid technical advances stemming from the technology displayed this year. “We saw a tremendous advance in equipment even between the time of the first test and the time the race started — and that was just seven days,” Negron said. He attributed the advance to teams sharing information. Competitors ranged from high school student teams to corporations. Nevertheless, all displayed a spirit of cooperative friendship. “We were surprised by how many people from various communities came together and were willing to share parts and ideas in a total spirit of camaraderie,” he noted.

Outsiders are equally upbeat about the race outcome and the plan for a second Challenge. “The race is in keeping with the best tradition of DARPA: finding innovative ways to stimulate the best results from the technical community that contribute to U.S. defense and ultimately the general economy,” said Mark Pullen, Associate Director of the Center of Excellence in Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence at George Mason University, a former DARPA program director, and former vice president of technology policy activities at IEEE-USA.

Fostering Interest, Saving Lives

While DARPA’s main organizational goal is to develop technology that can be deployed in the field to save U.S. lives, the agency also aims to foster interest in technology. The more citizens take an interest in technical issues, the greater the supply of ideas and the potential for taxpayer support of electronic projects will be. Negron noted that the public relations benefits of the Grand Challenge were huge and that it tapped a basic American interest. “Nothing excites people in America more than tinkering on something they can show off,” Negron said. “Whether it's backyard auto mechanics or robotics fans integrating electronics and mechanics, tinkering is part of the innovative American spirit.”

The race encompassed many different aspects of society and technology, but the key measures of success came in the participants’ actual technologies. The physical distance the robots traveled is largely unimportant in DARPA’s overall goal of keeping U.S. military personnel out of harm’s way by using autonomous vehicles whenever possible. Instead, DARPA researchers gleaned several so-called nuggets of useful technology from the designs.

“We got three gold nuggets, several silvers and more bronze —  items that DARPA and Grand Challenge teams can set out to pursue from a technical perspective,” Negron said. The “gold nugget” technologies relate to the ruggedized vehicle itself, the hardware-software interface and sensing capabilities.

In addition, Negron said the race attracted participants who haven’t been part of DARPA’s supply base and who offered unique technologies. For example, he said, “two brothers brought us an acoustic algorithm approach that nobody had ever seen before.”

Negron was surprised that the “winner” only traveled 7.4 miles. However, he agrees with team captains that some of the leading vehicles were doomed not by technical failures but rather by tactical mistakes such as racing against the clock instead of simply trying to finish. “There’s no question that (several) of the vehicles could have completed the course if all the moons had lined up correctly,” he said.

 

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Terry Costlow has written about the electronics industry for more than 20 years, covering a wide range of technologies and topics.