Ride of the Boss

The security guards on the perimeter road here at the former George Air Force Base got an eyeful this afternoon with two lines of cars, totaling about 20 vehicles, did a strange dance with Boss.

It was an ad hoc experiment to help Tartan Racing sort out some issues regarding the vehicle's SICK laser sensors. In test runs here in Victorville, the sensors caused Boss to mistake some dust clouds as objects. So the team wanted to know if they could turn down the sensitivity of those sensors enough so that the vehicle could ignore harmless dust without failing to detect truly important objects, such as other vehicles.

So every available team member with keys to a car took to the road this afternoon. Separating into two groups of roughly 10 cars, they took turns driving in single file past Boss, which was driven by Chris Urmson. It was a strange sight for the guards, as well as the occasional motorist who found themselves in the midst of these processions. Luckily, no police were around to notice the multiple U-turns.

The readings from the SICK sensors were recorded and now are being analyzed by team members. This type of experiment is something that the team has time to consider, now that Boss is officially in Saturday's race and no further qualifying runs are scheduled.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• darpa
• urban
• challenge
• victorville
• california
• valkyries
• boss
• carnegie
• mellon
• cmu

[lightupthehalo]

So they do illegal u-turns on Air Base Rd and put others in danger... lame

[logicalverbz]

Its all run down now and people think the old hospital so teenagers go there at night to 'ghost hunt' lol

I use to go there a few years back but security there always kicked us out.

[Candlestickpark1966]

I have some good memories of the now defunct George Air Force Base. Didn't really see anything I recognized. Wish one of the locals would go out and film some of the old areas of the base and put it on youtube.