Sting Racing eliminated in first round of DARPA Urban Challenge
By Craig Tabita / Student Publications
Sting Racing shows off its entry in the DARPA Urban Challenge on Oct. 17 at Tech Square. The entry was eliminated in the first round.
Sting 1, the autonomous Porsche Cayenne that Tech's Sting Racing team fielded in the DARPA Urban Challenge, made an early exit from the National Qualification Event, falling in the first group of teams to be eliminated Tuesday morning. Other teams eliminated in the same group included Princeton, Team Berlin and SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering.
The elimination came after the team encountered a number of problems during testing, including several accidents that put the vehicle out of commission. According to coverage by hardware news website tgdaily.com, Sting 1 collided with a concrete barrier at 24 miles per hour on Saturday, bending its front sensor bar and necessitating welding and recalibration.
While the team was able to recover from this setback with the help of several other teams including Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing, they faced a second challenge Sunday after having a minor run-in with another concrete barrier. The poor performances in the first few days were enough to doom the team despite its rebound on the last day of competition. A Wired News blog reported that the Porsche performed well on its test Monday, encountering only a few glitches before completing the test.
The elimination put an end to nearly a year of design and development on the part of Sting Racing. "The team is obviously very disappointed. We have worked hard to get to the race and have a truly amazing platform," a team member wrote on their official blog.
Despite the disappointing results, the team competed well against teams with years of development under their belts. "As a first time entrant, the team has done an outstanding job making it to the semi-final round of the world's most challenging robotics competition," wrote Tucker Balch, team lead and an associate professor in the College of Computing.
The final event of the DARPA Urban Challenge will take place Saturday, Nov. 3 at the test site in Victorville, Calif. It will be streamed live at www.grandchallenge.org.
