DARPA Grand Challenge 2004
The DARPA Grand Challenge 2004 was a DARPA competition for autonomous vehicles . It was carried out on March 13, 2004 in the Mohave Desert . DARPA set the prize money to one million dollars for the first vehicle that can successfully complete the 150-mile course. The DARPA Grand Challenge was repeated in 2005 .
The route from Barstow , California , ran parallel to Interstate 15 over roads and sand tracks closed to other traffic to Primm, just across the border with Nevada . The participants had to send an unmanned, fully autonomous vehicle into the race. Spatial boundaries were also defined and as soon as a vehicle drove outside these, it was disqualified. Each vehicle was accompanied by a manned vehicle for safety reasons. This should avoid collisions and other dangerous situations.
More than 100 teams registered with their vehicles to take part in the Grand Challenge. Each robot vehicle was given 10 hours of pure driving time, prescribed breaks were not included. However, none of the 15 vehicles that qualified for the main race managed to reach the finish line.
The favorite "Sandstorm", from the Red Team, the elite Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh , managed to get 7.4 miles - about 5% of the distance. However, the vehicle went off the track, hit an obstacle and caught fire. Thus none of the 15 teams managed to win the prize money of 1 million dollars.
