Richard Murray: Team Caltech: Racing to Win the DARPA Grand Challenge

This event was digitally recorded and is available for viewing on the Caltech Theater site.

The DARPA Grand Challenge is a desert road race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas that will take place on March 13, 2004, with a grand prize of $1 million. Competiting teams must build a vehicle that can operate completely autonomously (no remote control allowed!) and drive along a 250 mile course---including trails, open desert, water crossings, and dirt roads---in 10 hours or less. The course is specified two hours before the race starts as a set of 1000 GPS waypoints, along with a corridor varying between 10 meters and 10 kilometers wide, that the vehicles must stay within. Caltech undergraduates have been working since spring of 2003 to modify a 1996 Chevy Tahoe named "Bob" to compete in this competion, aided by researchers from Caltech, JPL, Northrop Grumman and other sponsors. In this talk, Professor Murray will describe Team Caltech's efforts and the results of the competition.

Richard Murray chairs Caltech's Division of Engineering and Applied Science and is Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

MORE INFO

All Watson Lectures will be available online at Caltech's Streaming Theater.