Katy Dickinson

CMU's Tartan Racing in DARPA Urban Challenge

John and Paul and I are here in Pittsburgh, PA, visiting Jessica during CMU's Family Weekend. Among other activities, we spent several hours in Baker Hall watching a live feed of the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. CMU's robot car Tartan Racing Boss (#19) came in just behind Stanford U's bot "Junior" (#3) over the finish line in Victorville, CA. However, the final score is not just based on speed completing the 6-parts of each of the 3 missions. We will know at 11 am tomorrow which team won. Two years ago in the DARPA Grand Challenge, Stanford was first and CMU second.

The Baker Hall auditorium was full of students and parents and faculty, many wearing CMU Robotics shirts. Every time "The Boss" was mentioned or shown on the big screen, there were cheers. Of the 11 finalists, 6 were expected to finish but only 3 had actually crossed the line when we went off to find dinner.

The commentators were very clear on the differences they saw between the 6 final race contestants. One said that it was easy to forget that the bots were empty - their behavior was so human, they didn't seem like machines. Each of the cars developed nicknames in addition to their numbers and official names. Some of the remarks we heard from the commentators:

• #3 Stanford University's "Junior" - clean behavior, just right
• #19 CMU's "The Boss" Tartan Racing - crisp and flashy, brash, clean and effective
• #32 Virginia Tech's "Odin" Victor Tango - a sleeper, gentler
• #79 MIT's "Talos" - a little spastic, agressive, a bully, lurching
• #26 Cornell's "Skynet" - crisp and flashy
• #74 University of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University's "Little Ben" Ben Franklin - slow, sluggish, careful

Each of the car development teams had different objectives in creating their bot. None of the cars created primarily for military use made it into the final six. CMU's team description includes: "General Motors, the world's largest automaker, is aboard for the future of driver safety. CAT, the world's largest equipment producer, is committed to the future of worksite automation. CMU is driven to push the technical limits of driverless machines."

The race commentators tried to be objective; however, it felt like they were most impressed by the Stanford and CMU bots, most affectionate toward Little Ben, and just irritated by the pushy MIT bot with its 40 processors. The MIT car always went as fast as it could but had at least two accidents (one with the Cornell car), which lead to the comment that it was so smart it was confusing itself. We had a fun time watching the race.

Posted at 06:12PM Nov 03, 2007 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

Visit to Pittsburgh, PA (and Church Split)

John and Paul and I are visiting Jessica for CMU's Family Weekend here in Pittsburgh, PA. Last night, Jessica and Paul and I saw a late showing of the movie Transformers (which was much better than I feared). Paul and the cabbie who drove us back to the hotel had a passionate discussion about the history and collecting of Transformer toys.

We woke up today to the headline "Episcopal Diocese Votes to Leave" in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. There is a minority of Episcopal parishes here in Pittsburgh which are opposed to the recent vote to split from the national church. So, we are going to have fun deciding which Episcopal parish church to attend tomorrow morning - one which voted to split or one staying with the national church?

Posted at 07:39AM Nov 03, 2007 by katysblog in Church  |