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Great Robot Race, The
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Viewing Ideas
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Before Watching
The DARPA Grand Challenge involves building an autonomous ground vehicle that
will race across 212 kilometers of unpaved roads in Nevada's Mojave Desert.
Discuss what an autonomous vehicle is and have students brainstorm and predict
some of the challenges the vehicles might face. (An autonomous vehicle can
perform tasks by itself for an extended period of time. The major challenge is
to detect and stay on the road while avoiding obstacles that could disable the
vehicle.) Organize the class into four groups and assign each group one of the
following teams to track: Carnegie Mellon University (Red Team), Bruce and Dave
Hall (Team Digital Audio Drive), Anthony Levandowski (Ghostrider), or Stanford
University (Stanley). Have groups take notes on each team's members, hardware
and software strategies, and resources.
After Watching
Have students who took notes on the same team meet, compare their notes, and
present what they learned to the class. How did the teams compare in terms of
size, number, and makeup? What hardware choices did each team make? How did
each team program its software? What were the similarities and differences
among the strategies? What were the main reasons for each team's success or
failure?
Have students consider future use of autonomous vehicles. What technical
hurdles need to be overcome for these robots to work? What are some potential
uses for these robots? What kind of changes, if any, would be needed to
accommodate new robot uses, i.e., would new highways need to be built, or new
laws formulated, for cars that drove themselves?
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