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Great Robot Race, The
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Viewing Ideas
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Before Watching
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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.)
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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
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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?
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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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