DARPA Grand Challenge

The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for American autonomous vehicles, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the most prominent research organization of the United States Department of Defense. Congress has authorized DARPA to award cash prizes to further DARPA's mission to sponsor revolutionary, high-payoff research that bridges the gap between fundamental discoveries and military use. The initial DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004 was created to spur the development of technologies needed to create the first fully autonomous ground vehicles capable of completing a substantial off-road course within a limited time. The third event, the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007, extended the initial Challenge to autonomous operation in a mock urban environment. The 2012 DARPA Robotics Challenge, focused on autonomous emergency-maintenance robots, and new Challenges are still being conceived. The DARPA Subterranean Challenge was tasked with building robotic teams to autonomously map, navigate, and search subterranean environments. Such teams could be useful in exploring hazardous areas and in search and rescue.
In addition to the challenges in autonomous technology, DARPA has also conducted prize competitions in other areas of technology.

History and background

Fully autonomous vehicles have been an international pursuit for many years, from endeavors in Japan, Germany, Italy, the European Union, the United States of America, and other countries. DARPA funded the development of the first fully autonomous robot beginning in 1966 with the Shakey the robot project at Stanford Research Institute, now SRI International. The first autonomous ground vehicle capable of driving on and off roads was developed by DARPA as part of the Strategic Computing Initiative beginning in 1984 leading to demonstrations of autonomous navigation by the Autonomous Land Vehicle and the Navlab.
The Grand Challenge was the first long distance competition for driverless cars in the world; other research efforts in the field of driverless cars take a more traditional commercial or academic approach. The U.S. Congress authorized DARPA to offer prize money for the first Grand Challenge to facilitate robotic development, with the ultimate goal of making one-third of ground military forces autonomous by 2015. Following the 2004 event, Dr. Tony Tether, the director of DARPA, announced that the prize money had been increased to $2 million for the next event, which was claimed on October 9, 2005. The first, second and third places in the 2007 Urban Challenge received $2 million, $1 million, and $500,000, respectively. 14 new teams have qualified in year 2015.
The competition was open to teams and organizations from around the world, as long as there was at least one U.S. citizen on the roster. Teams have participated from high schools, universities, businesses and other organizations. More than 100 teams registered in the first year, bringing a wide variety of technological skills to the race. In the second year, 195 teams from 36 U.S. states and 4 foreign countries entered the race.

2004 Grand Challenge

The first competition of the DARPA Grand Challenge was held on March 13, 2004 in the Mojave Desert region of the United States, along a route that follows along the path of Interstate 15 from just before Barstow, California to just past the California-Nevada border in Primm.
None of the robot vehicles finished the route. Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team and car Sandstorm traveled the farthest distance, completing of the course before getting hung up on a rock after making a switchback turn. No winner was declared, and the cash prize was not given. Therefore, a second DARPA Grand Challenge event was scheduled for 2005.

2005 Grand Challenge

The second competition of the DARPA Grand Challenge began at 6:40 am on October 8, 2005. All but one of the 23 finalists in the 2005 race surpassed the distance completed by the best vehicle in the 2004 race. Five vehicles successfully completed the 212 km course:

Vehicle	Team name	Team home	Time taken	Result
Stanley		Stanford University, Palo Alto, California	6:54	First place
Sandstorm		Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania	7:05	Second place
H1ghlander		Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania	7:14	Third place
Kat-5		The Gray Insurance Company, Metairie, Louisiana	7:30	Fourth place
TerraMax		Oshkosh Truck Corporation, Oshkosh, Wisconsin	12:51	Over 10-hour limit, fifth place

Vehicles in the 2005 race passed through three narrow tunnels and negotiated more than 100 sharp left and right turns. The race concluded through Beer Bottle Pass, a winding mountain pass with a sheer drop-off on one side and a rock face on the other. Although the 2004 course required more elevation gain and some very sharp switchbacks were required near the beginning of the route, the course had far fewer curves and generally wider roads than the 2005 course.
The natural rivalry between the teams from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon was played out during the race. Mechanical problems plagued H1ghlander before it was passed by Stanley. Gray Team's entry was a miracle in itself, as the team from the suburbs of New Orleans was caught in Hurricane Katrina a few short weeks before the race. The fifth finisher, Terramax, a 30,000 pound entry from Oshkosh Truck, finished on the second day. The huge truck spent the night idling on the course, but was particularly nimble in carefully picking its way down the narrow roads of Beer Bottle Pass.

2007 Urban Challenge

The third competition of the DARPA Grand Challenge, known as the "Urban Challenge", took place on November 3, 2007 at the site of the now-closed George Air Force Base, in Victorville, California. The course involved a urban area course, to be completed in less than 6 hours. Rules included obeying all traffic regulations while negotiating with other traffic and obstacles and merging into traffic.
Unlike previous challenges, the 2007 Urban Challenge organizers divided competitors into two "tracks", A and B. All Track A and Track B teams were part of the same competition circuit, but the teams chosen for the Track A program received US $1 million in funding. These 11 teams largely represented major universities and large corporate interests such as CMU teaming with GM as Tartan Racing, Stanford teaming with Volkswagen, Virginia Tech teaming with TORC Robotics as VictorTango, Oshkosh Truck, Honeywell, Raytheon, Caltech, Autonomous Solutions, Cornell University, and MIT. One of the few independent entries in Track A was . DARPA has not publicly explained the rationale behind the selection of Track A teams.
Teams were given maps sparsely charting the waypoints that defined the competition courses. At least one team, Tartan Racing, enhanced the maps through the insertion of additional extrapolated waypoints for improved navigation. A debriefing paper published by Team Jefferson illustrates graphically the contrast between the course map it was given by DARPA and the course map used by Tartan Racing.
Tartan Racing claimed the $2 million prize with their vehicle "Boss", a Chevy Tahoe. The second-place finisher earning the $1 million prize was the Stanford Racing Team with their entry "Junior", a 2006 Volkswagen Passat. Coming in third place was team VictorTango, winning the $500,000 prize with their 2005 Ford Escape hybrid, "Odin". MIT placed 4th, with Cornell University and University of Pennsylvania/Lehigh University also completing the course.
The six teams that successfully finished the entire course:

Team name	ID#	Vehicle	Type	Team home	Time taken	Result
	19	Boss	2007 Chevy Tahoe	Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania	4:10:20	1st Place; averaged approximately 14 mph throughout the course
	03	Junior	2006 Volkswagen Passat Wagon	Stanford University, Palo Alto, California	4:29:28	2nd Place; averaged about 13.7 mph throughout the course
VictorTango	32	Odin	2005 Ford Hybrid Escape	Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia	4:36:38	3rd Place; averaged slightly less than 13 mph throughout the course
	79	Talos	Land Rover LR3	MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts	Approx. 6 hours	4th Place.
	74	Little Ben	2006 Toyota Prius	University of Pennsylvania, Lehigh University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	No official time.	One of 6 teams to finish course
	26	Skynet	2007 Chevy Tahoe	Cornell University, Ithaca, New York	No official time.	One of 6 teams to finish course

While the 2004 and 2005 events were more physically challenging for the vehicles, the robots operated in isolation and only encountered other vehicles on the course when attempting to pass. The Urban Challenge required designers to build vehicles able to obey all traffic laws while they detect and avoid other robots on the course. This is a particular challenge for vehicle software, as vehicles must make "intelligent" decisions in real time based on the actions of other vehicles. Other than previous autonomous vehicle efforts that focused on structured situations such as highway driving with little interaction between the vehicles, this competition operated in a more cluttered urban environment and required the cars to perform sophisticated interactions with each other, such as maintaining precedence at a 4-way stop intersection.