If We Were to Give a Ranking...

When DARPA Director Tony Tether on Thursday announced the 11 teams whose robots would start Saturday's Urban Challenge, he didn't list them in rank order. But when it came time to name Tartan Racing, he did allow that "if we were to give a ranking of No. 1...Tartan Racing!"

Tether said DARPA could have accommodated up to 24 teams in Saturday's event, but in the interest of safety settled on just 11 teams. In addition to Tartan Racing, they include Stanford, Virginia Tech, Germany's CarOLO team, Cornell, Penn, MIT, University of Central Florida, Team Oshkosh, Intelligent Vehicle Systems of Troy, Mich., and a largely German team based in Palo Alto, Calif., called Team Annie Way.

Starting time for the race has been pushed back an hour to minimize interference between the rising sun and the vehicle sensors, so the opening ceremonies will start at 7:30 a.m. PT and the first robot is supposed to leave its starting chute at 8 a.m. PT.

Tether said DARPA hasn't determined the order in which teams will start the race, but each will be set off on a different "mission," and so will be heading in slightly different directions. Each robot will need to complete several missions and so will, return to the vicinity of the starting area about 10 times. So it won't be too long, he predicted, before robots begin to encounter each other in traffic.

Tether is particularly intrigued by the possibilities when two robots approach each other from opposite directions. "That will be the first real test where I'll be holding my breath," he said.

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• urban
• challenge
• tartan
• tartanracing
• carnegie
• mellon
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