CARNEGIE MELLON WINS!!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, November 4th, 2007

The Carnegie Mellon University-based Tartan Racing team walked away with a $2 million prize for coming in first in this year’s Pentagon-sponsored robot race held at a former Air Force base in Victorville, Calif. The team’s robotic vehicle, “Boss,” turned in the top performance as it navigated itself through the Urban Challenge course at the former George Air Force Base. It and the eleven other finalist robot-vehicles had to merge into moving traffic, navigate traffic circles and avoid obstacles without human intervention. Stanford Racings “Junior” of Stanford, Calif., won the $1 million second place prize, while Victor Tangos “Odin” of Blacksburg, Va., received $500,000 for finishing third.

Woohoo! Congrats Carnegie! That’s pretty awesome. I’m actually very happy that they won, because I recently watched a show that showed all of the robots they created for Mars and such. Furthermore, KEEPON ROCKS!!! Who doesn’t love the Keepon?!

Wooohooo!

Link.

Posted in: News, Robot News, Tech News.

MIT DARPA Vehicle

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, October 25th, 2007

MIT has seriously modified the LR3 so that it can drive itself and perform basic tasks like avoiding obstacles and merging into moving traffic. It utilises state-of-the-art hardware like LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) range finders and vision sensors to view its surrounds and avoid anything that gets in the way.

We’ll see how it does! Link.

Posted in: News, Other News, Robot News, Tech News.