Urban Challenge 2007

This year's DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Grand Challenge event, better known as DARPA Urban Challenge 2007, begins on November 3, 2007. DARPA will announce the precise venue (western USA) just a few days before the race. Previous events have been geared towards proving the feasibility of autonomous ground vehicles and providing incentives, in the form of cash prizes, for example, for the development of autonomous vehicle technologies.

In this year's Urban Challenge, scheduled for November 2007, the various teams' autonomous ground vehicles will have to complete a 60-mile (around 100km) mock urban area course. First prize is $2 million, second prize is $500,000 and third prize is $250,000.

The major challenge is to design a vehicle capable of completing the course autonomously in less than six hours, while obeying traffic laws and merging into moving traffic. Further challenges include having to navigate sharp corners, avoid moving obstacles and park automatically.

The smart systems team will supply the SciAutonics / Auburn Engineering race team (for its Sieber-AU-TO-ES autonomous ground vehicle) with a real time-capable sensor system designed to extract lane marker information and detect obstacles. The sensor is based on a real time-capable embedded vision platform developed by smart systems and is a development of the Stereo vision sensor used in the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005. Two cameras deliver images which are processed electronically in real time. The sensor software algorithms for detecting obstacles allow obstacles and moving objects to be identified. The vehicle has to be able to react quickly to obstacles in order to avoid collision. In addition to the vehicle's eyes, other sensors, such as laser scanners for scanning the ground, deliver data that is critical to completing the course.

Date	Activity
May 11, 2007	Announcement of participants for Site Visit (part of qualifying process)
June 11 - July 20, 2007	Site Visit prequalifying
August 10, 2007	Announcement of semi-finalists and qualifying venue
October 21 - 31, 2007	Semi-finalist qualifying for the race
November 3, 2007	UGC 2007 - the race -