Carnegie Mellon's Red Team and Sandstorm, its autonomous 1986 Hummer, qualified for the $1 Million DARPA Grand Challenge at the California Speedway in Fontana, Calif., yesterday (March 9).

Sandstorm, equipped with the world's fastest computers and best electronics in the world, was the only robotic vehicle to complete the 1.36-mile obstacle course in first round qualifiers yesterday. Each of the 20 entries has two chances to complete the course. Second round qualifiers will be held Thursday (March 11).

Sandstorm's success came just days after it suffered severe damage in an accident during test runs in Nevada.

The Grand Challenge, which begins at 6:30 a.m., Saturday, March 13, is a 210-mile off- and on-road race through the rugged Mojave Desert, from Barstow, Calif., to Primm, Nevada, near Las Vegas. Once the race begins no human intervention is allowed.

To make it more difficult, the actual race course will be announced just two hours before race time. Once the course, a series of waypoints or checkpoints, is revealed, Red Team leader William "Red" Whittaker said his team will employ "an army of computing" to determine and send the best route to Sandstorm. The robot completing the course in 10 hours or less will win the $1 million cash prize.

Sandstorm's "eyes" consist of a laser range finder for mapping terrain combined with a stereovision system for obstacle classification and for recognizing moving objects. These sensors ride on a "neck" designed to keep the robot's scanners on the road as it bounces through rough terrain. Sandstorm also scans the horizon with radar, which adds the ability to see through dust. In addition, there is a differential global positioning system (GPS) to help Sandstorm stay on course. This is tied to a high-fidelity map that the team will create and download when DARPA releases the waypoints for the course at 4:30 a.m., Saturday.

"This race will change the view of what's possible and introduce new robotic applications in the world," said Whittaker, the Fredkin Research Professor in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. Whittaker leads a group of some 50 Carnegie Mellon students, faculty and researchers as well as talent drawn from its pool of sponsors.

While some experts doubt the Grand Challenge can be completed this year, the Red Team and Sandstorm have been recently touted as top contenders in national magazines, such as Scientific American, Popular Science and Wired.

The challenge lies in sensing. Any Hummer can travel 210 miles in under 10 hours, but this one can only move as quickly as it can interpret the data it receives simultaneously from maps, radar and lidar scans.

"We need to have excellent sensing capability," Red Team technology leader Chris Urmson said. "The computer ride will encounter hazards a human would avoid, so we've made computer modeling of this complex terrain a priority."

Pre-mapping and routing strategies are directed by route leader Mike Clark, who describes them as "enabling capabilities for competing in the race."

"We'll be using two terabytes of data to generate high-resolution maps of the desert," Clark said. "Our planning software will process the maps to classify the terrain, reach the waypoints, avoid difficulties, determine our speeds and optimize our route."

For more information about the Red Team, see: www.redteamracing.org

For more on the evolution of Sandstorm, see: http://www.cmu.edu/corporate/news/2004/popups/RedTeam1.html

To hear Red Whittaker's recent interview on National Public Radio (March 10), visit http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1755783

For more information on sponsors, see: www.redteamracing.org/sponsors

For more information about the DARPA Challenge, see: www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/

Lisa Kirchner & Anne Watzman