And this is why we rock. CMU Tartan Racing‘s “Boss” won first place. During parents weekend at Carnegie Mellon we all watched Darpa Urban Challenge–it started with 11 teams. Katy (Mom) blogged about it as well. The teams were (for example) from MIT, Virginia Tech, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, and a joint team from University of Karlsruhe, the TU Munich, the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (IITB in Karlsruhe), as well as the Universitaet der Bundeswehr Munich.

Slow by slow the teams were eliminated until there were only 6. When we stopped watching there were a clear top 3: CMU‘s Tartan Racing, Stanford’s Junior and Virginia Tech’s VictorTango (anyone remember their military alphabet?).

This challenge was different from the 2005 Darpa Grand Challenge in the Nevada desert where the winner was clearly whichever car crossed the finish line first (at all) was the winner. Here the judges took into account safety, accuracy of movement, and of course, following California’s driving code.

In the end, Tartan Racing came out on top, because we rock.

Go Tartans!

Inspirational Quote:

“Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.” – Marston Bates