I assume some of you have heard of the DARPA Grand Challenge?

Assuming nobody wins this year's GC, are there any gearheads among you who want to get together and form a team for next year's GC?

In short, the DARPA GC is a race for robotic (computer-driven) vehicles to traverse 175 miles of desert terrain, within 10 hours. The course is set in Nevada somewhere.

http://www.darpa.gov/grandchallenge/overview.html

I tried pitching the idea to the company I work for but didn't get enough sponsors to go forward Let's get together and do something cool! There are enough techies in here to pull it off. I hereby volunteer myself for C/C++ programming, sysadmin, and heavy lifting. And feed the dogs.

The challenges facing the teams are:
(1) obstacle avoidance
(2) position tracking
(3) terrain following (stay on course)
(4) collision avoidance
(5) sensor data collection / fusion / mapping

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DIRTY KJ :: flickr photostream
"Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare ... some would say it has yet to occur on Earth" --- Stephen Hawking