The Great Robot Race Part I
Objectives
- Learn about the Grand Challenge
- Learn about advances in mobile robotics
This assignment must be completed individually,
and you may not consult
with one another.
Create a new Microsoft Word or text document named YourUserName-A9.
In this assignment, we are going to watch the
first part of an hour long program produced by public television's
NOVA, which is the highest rated science and most acclaimed series
on television, having won every major television award, most of them
many times over. NOVA is also the most
watched documentary series on the Public Broadcast System (PBS)
NOVA has put together an hour-long special on the Grand Challenge, called "The Great Robot Race." We will watch the first 29:34 minutes of the program on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoiJeIb0wBA, which will leave exactly 23 minutes to watch in a future assignment.
After watching the first part of the video(s) described above, try to answer each of the following questions using no more than 3 sentences per question:
- Who sponsored the Grand Challenge and what was it exactly?
- What were the motivations for this challenge?
- What happened during the 2004 race?
- Who is Red Whittaker and why is he important in the Grand Challenge?
- What kinds of sensors did "the Red Army" use?
- Who are the Hall brothers and how did their approach to the challenge differ from that of "the Red Army"?
- Describe DAD.
- Describe team TerraMax and their vehicle.
- Describe GhostRider.
- Of all of the vehicles presented, which do you think is the most likely to do well in the Grand Challenge. Be sure to explain why you believe this.
- What was the name of Stanford's entry, who was in charge of this team, and what is his background?
- Describe the vehicle entered by Stanford and the reasons for the choice of name for Stanford's entry?
- How did the Stanford team's approach to preparing the vehicle for the Grand Challenge differ from that of the Red Team?
- What is meant by the statement this race is like driving the robots "through a fog?"
- What is a gimble, who used one, and what are the advantages/disadvantages of using a gimble?
- The first competition of the DARPA Grand Challenge was held in
2004 and the second in 2005. What are your guesses about what impact
this might have had on self-driving cars today.
When you are finished, save the file as YourUserName-A9 and submit the file to the appropriate location in Moodle.