Congratulations are in order to the Ben Franklin Racing Team for being selected to go to the qualifying round (and beyond) for the DARPA Urban Challenge in October. This thing was put together in a year and it seams safe enough to drive itself effectively now and at relatively high speeds. It can distinguish lanes and intersection markings, differentiate and circumnavigate obstacles, and make k-turns. If you have time, check out the videos on their website. I understand the next phase will include turbo boost and super pursuit mode

I really should have posted on this sooner. Work is participating in the DARPA Urban Challenge together with UPenn and Lehigh, my alma mater, as part of the Ben Franklin Racing Team. It makes me very sad I could not participate but I will just have to live vicariously for the moment. I understand our team is doing really well. All four missions completed at the recent site visit with bonus exhibition time to spare.

The original video submission gives the actual specs. Linux inside, what else really. At the teams website you will also find a few other videos of cool stuff.

I was at DARPA Tech 2004 expo, which ran concurrently with the the first Grand Challenge. Tony Tether came out and announced that only a handful of submissions out of hundreds actually qualified. Many would not even start up. There were many heart broken engineers and technologists in the room. Personally I blame programming language tower of babel for much of it. Perhaps it was an effective wake-up call because the following year several vehicles actually completed and this years submissions are something to be proud of.