Million Dollar Race That Created Todays Driverless Cars

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) of United States ran its first Grand Challenge with the goal of accelerating the development of autonomous vehicles on March 13, 2004. Fifteen vehicles entered in final round out of 21 qualified entries to make history in the first-of-its-kind race. However, in this first edition of grand challenge, no team’s self driving vehicle successfully completed the designated route in the desert terrain. Carnegie Mellon University's Red Teams car Sandstorm traveled the farthest distance i.e. 11.78 km. Most of the vehicles in first Grand Challenge failed or crashed within few miles from starting line. The events $1 million prize went unclaimed as no vehicle was able to complete the 132 mile in the desert. Therefore, this race was deemed as a failure. Although it was nobody's game, but offered a promising future for self driving cars. It spurred interest and innovation towards building self driving cars. A decade later Lt. Col. Scott Wadle, DARPA’s liaison to the U.S. Marine Corps said in an interview, “That first competition created a community of innovators, engineers, students, programmers, off-road racers, backyard mechanics, inventors and dreamers who came together to make history by trying to solve a tough technical problem.”?

"When you remove fear of failure from the equation, impossible things suddenly become possible."?– Regina Dugan, Researcher and Ex-DARPA Director

Just one day after the first challenge ended, DARPA announced it would hold a second Grand Challenge in 2005 i.e. 18 months after the first. The second autonomous vehicle DARPA Grand Challenge held on October 8, 2005 in the deserts of Nevada. Twenty-three vehicles out of 195 entries surpassed the 11.78 km distance completed by the best vehicle in the 2004 race. More importantly, five vehicles out of 23 finalists, successfully completed a 132-mile distance through narrow tunnels and navigated sharp turns. Stanford University’s entry, “Stanley,” finished first with a time of 6 hours and 53 minutes and won the $2 million prize. Sandstorm best performing vehicle from previous edition finished second but there was no prize runner up and other teams. With five vehicles completing the designated route, Grand Challenge 2005 redefined perception for the development of self-driving cars. Although, this competition was conducted in remote deserts as opposed to the real-world urban scenario. Nevertheless, it was a step toward realizing self driving car in future. It was DARPA’s Urban Challenge 2007 that unofficially kicked off today’s self-driving technology initiatives.

DARPA continued the excitement generated by the previous challenges, engaging researchers around the world to advance intelligent autonomous vehicle technology. Moreover, there was sense of incompleteness of mission within DARPA. Therefore, DARPA held Urban Challenge on November 3, 2007, at the former George AFB in Victorville, California. This urban challenge required teams to build an autonomous vehicle capable of driving speeds up to 30 miles per hour (mph) in traffic, performing complex maneuvers such as merging, passing, parking, and negotiating intersections. Eleven vehicles made to the finals out of 35 semi-finalists. The challenge was held in military base, which had been set up to resemble a busy urban area. Despite the hard-technical problems, six teams were able to complete the race and demonstrate that autonomous vehicles are feasible. The first prize was went to ‘Boss’ developed by Tartan Racing, a team led by Carnegie Mellon University. The second-place finisher was Stanford Racing Team’s ‘Junior’. In third place was ‘Odin’ from Team Victor Tango at Virginia Tech. Vehicles from MIT, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania/Lehigh also successfully completed the course. First three self driving cars were built by teams that had finished in the top ten in the 2005 grand challenge. Surprisingly, no car manufacturers participated in these events. However, most of the teams were sponsored by car manufacturers. These vehicles were considered incredible at the time and looking back, this marked the beginning of a long journey.

Urban challenge was groundbreaking as the first time autonomous vehicles have interacted with both manned and unmanned vehicle traffic in an urban environment. In 2008, just one year after the Urban Challenge, Google started self driving car project under the leadership of Sebastian Thrun, winner of Grand Challenge 2005 and runner-up of Urban Challenge 2007. Google hired the best engineers participated in DARPA challenges. In 2010, the Google self-driving car navigated 1,000 miles of public roads in California, an unbelievable feat from that first challenge. Thus, a race to the development of self driving cars started with million dollar in the deserts of California. Today driverless car is one of the most sought emerging trends across the globe.

For those who are interested to know more technical details about these competing autonomous vehicles can read technical papers from the link given below:

The 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge

The DARPA Urban Challenge

Last year I have completed Self Driving Car Engineer NanoDegree Certification from Udacity. It is one of the best learning and certification I have come across in recent times. The founder of Udacity is Sebastian Thrun who is also regarded as father of modern self driving cars. One gets a chance to learn from man himself during this certification. Those who are interested can visit Udacity link below:

Self-Driving Car Engineer

Here is my Self Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree Certificate. I am loving it.