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"  It might just be the race of the year: After years-long builds and rough-and-tumble qualifiers, 11 unmanned vehicles are set to take to the streets for the 2007 Urban Challenge. PM contributing editor and resident geek Erik Sofge is race-side in Victorville, Calif., with play-by-play coverage and live updates throughout the day. Stay tuned for more!  UPDATE: Carnegie Mellon and GM&amp;#039;s Boss Wins 2007 Challenge   EARLIER: Tough Road Ahead in Secret-Filled DARPA Urban ChallengePREVIEW: Behind the Scenes of the Hardest Robot Race Yet (with Video)PLUS: Carnegie Mellon vs. Stanford Is Robot Racing&amp;#039;s Biggest Rivalry  3:30 pm - Ben Franklin&amp;#039;s Little Ben has finished, but two teams\u2014Cornell and MIT\u2014are still struggling to wrap up the 60-mile race. Coincidentally, these vehicles crashed into each other earlier today. Disappointingly, they&amp;#039;re not close enough for a rematch. But even accounting for stoppage time and later starting positions, there&amp;#039;s no way either team can make it in under the six-hour mark. And unlike a NASCAR or F1 race, where even the lapped drivers finish reasonably soon after the prize-winners, watching this race has become an act of charity. So to avoid beating a dead horse\u2014or rather, watching it decompose\u2014we&amp;#039;re going to sign off. The winners of the 2007 Urban Challenge will be announced tomorrow morning, at 10 am PST, so check back with us then for a full recap.  2:25 pm - The drama is basically done. Terramax was pulled before demolishing anything (including itself). A number vehicles were pulled for being the robotic equivalent of stupid. One crash happened on-camera, another is still alleged, and both involved MIT&amp;#039;s Talos. So what&amp;#039;s left to do? Make fun of Talos, of course. Loaded with some 2000 pounds of gear, the MIT vehicle has proven itself bumbling\u2014it stopped directly in front of me, for example, providing an unintentional and awkwardly long photo op (above)\u2014and crash-happy. It nearly timed out while off-road, forced a head-on standoff with another vehicle, and its continued lurch towards completion is a bona fide mystery. Other cars seemed to have been pulled for less by DARPA, and as the excitement here rapidly withers, watching Talos repeatedly get into trouble has lost its inherent, mean-spirited humor. Talos is giving robots a bad name. The least it can do is crash for our pleasure.   1:56 pm - The first across the finish line, not too surprisingly, is Junior. But barely a minute or two later, it wasn&amp;#039;t Odin pulling in, but Boss. After starting roughly 40 minutes after Stanford, Tartan seems to have burned through these 19 missions, almost ensuring a third prize finish for Virginia Tech, and possibly redeeming themselves after the 2005 Grand Challenge. I asked Tartan leader William &amp;quot;Red&amp;quot; Whittaker if he thinks they won. &amp;quot;Absolutely,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;d be ashamed if we didn&amp;#039;t beat them by a half hour.&amp;quot; Victor Tango has now finished as well, but the question is, just how much of a factor will speed play in DARPA&amp;#039;s final analysis? There was at least one point\u2014during the Talos-Skynet crash\u2014when Junior was stopped, while Boss continued on. But that stretch was nowhere near 40 minutes. The fact is, Boss looks like the fastest competitor here, and since neither Stanford or Tartan suffered even a minor accident, the decision might come down to speed versus style. And if this really is a race, it&amp;#039;s obvious who will win. 1:34 pm - Stanford has just one mission to go. Spectators are beginning to scramble for the main grandstands, smelling a victory. By pulling ahead of Odin, Junior is almost certainly knocking Virginia Tech out of contention for the $2 million first prize. But since Boss began its day far behind Junior&amp;#039;s second-position start, comparing the run-times for the two rivals is going to be tough. Figure in the fact that DARPA can weigh all of the factors, from total time to driving behavior to mission success, and nearly any celebration today is premature.  1:22 pm - It appears that MIT&amp;#039;s Talos has made contact twice, touching CarOLO&amp;#039;s vehicle earlier in the race, before the crash with Skynet. And just now, Victor Tango&amp;#039;s Odin made a truly half-hearted attempt at parking, pulling partway into a spot before heading for the exit. This dark horse is looking darker by the minute. Or is that less dark? It&amp;#039;s nearing the end of its final set of seven missions, with at least a solid lock on third place, in our easily-proven-wrong opinion.  12:45 pm - Talos and Skynet have lived to drive another day. Both vehicles have made it into the staging area to prepare for another set of missions. And we have an update on that initial late start from Boss. According to a Tartan member, the interference caused by the nearby big-screen display was interfering with the GPS system, not the vehicle&amp;#039;s sensors. The GPS signal was lost entirely, so once the problem was diagnosed, and the display shut off, Boss proceeded normally. None of that delay translated to deducted time, and considering that Boss made it through the most congested portion of the race, the loss of pole position doesn&amp;#039;t seem to have had any impact.  12:35 pm - Ladies and gentlemen, we have a crash. Just when we thought the race was getting tepid, MIT&amp;#039;s Talos and Cornell&amp;#039;s Skynet have collided. It wasn&amp;#039;t head-on, but their front bumpers are in danger of being coupled together, and officials are attempting to pull them apart with damaging bumper-positioned sensors. It isn&amp;#039;t spectacular, but it is robot-on-robot damage. Junior was paused before it could catch up to the accident site, but Boss, Little Ben and Odin are continuing on there respective missions.  12:30 pm - The action has dropped off significantly, although a brief off-road moment for Odin has made our prediction a lot less authoritative, and Cornell&amp;#039;s stumbling Skynet just got skittish at an intersection, backing up pointlessly because of an approaching traffic vehicle. With fewer robots on the road, there&amp;#039;s less chance for autonomous mayhem, and less stoppage as vehicles are rebooted (or recycled, as DARPA calls it) or pulled off the course. The winds have picked up, but there are no dust-related false readings showing up.   11:40 am - After nearly four hours of close calls, algorithm hiccups, and some excellent (if somewhat prim) low-speed driving, here are the six surviving teams, and their apparent performance -Ben Franklin Racing Team, Philadelphia, Penn. This Prius has gone off-road, stopped for no real reason, and nearly crashed into another team. It&amp;#039;ll be surprising if it finishes at all. -MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Talos came close to disqualification at least twice\u2014once when confused by a dirt road, and other when it stopped nose-to-nose with another car. Points-wise, MIT must be hurting. -Stanford Racing Team, Stanford, Calif. Junior apparently didn&amp;#039;t perform as well as Boss in the qualifier, but today, the Passat has had a remarkably clean run. -Tartan Racing, Pittsburgh, Penn. The frontrunner lost its pole position due to interference from a nearby big-screen display. And aside from a slight pause during an early left turn, Boss has excelled. The Tahoe has been less smooth-going than Junior, but Tartan is hoping for an advantage in total speed. -Team Cornell, Ithaca, New York At best, Skynet is battling for the bronze, behind Tartan, Victor Tango and Stanford. Like Little Ben and Talos, Skynet is fighting to survive, having caused a serious jam-up at a four-way intersection. -Victor Tango, Blacksburg, Virginia Odin placed second after the qualifying round, and deserves its spot among the frontrunners. In terms of both speed and driving skill, the Virginia Tech vehicle is making a serious run for first place. If we had to pick, we&amp;#039;d go with Victor Tango.  11:15 am - The commentators here are definitely overselling the intelligence of some of these vehicles. In describing the parking-related missions, they&amp;#039;ve claimed that the bots are pulling into a space by detecting the white painted lines. In fact, detecting these kinds of lines is largely optional in this challenge. What these vehicles have, that your car probably never will, is a massive collection of pre-loaded GPS waypoints. The challenge in dealing with the parking lot is other cars, and perfect coordination with those waypoints. What none of us can see from the various camera angles, elevated grandstands and even helicopter shots, is the detailed overlay of waypoints guiding these cars. In the Tartan Racing qualifier run I attended a few months ago, the position of each waypoint was indicated, for judging purposes, with a blob of white paint in the road. Here, the roads are clean, and the robots seem a lot more accomplished. This is impressive, but let&amp;#039;s be clear\u2014there are GPS rails, essentially, that these bots are running on.  In other news, CarOLO has been pulled from the race. Which means there are just 6 vehicles left, all of which have pulled off at least one complete set of missions.  10:30 am - According to UCF, their vehicle has been pulled out of competition. It will be left in place for the moment, sitting off-road, in the yard of a house. Kind of an undignified end for a genuine underdog (Knight Rider was the oldest car in the race).  10:23 am - Stanford has also made it through its first six-mission set\u2014there are 19 planned missions planned\u2014while UCF&amp;#039;s Knight Rider has been stopped perilously close to a house. Another near-miss, or an actual crash? Meanwhile, MIT and CarOLO are facing off, seemingly paused before a head-on collision could occur. Clearly, the people here want blood, or rather oil, so here&amp;#039;s hoping that DARPA is a little less quick on the emergency-stop switch.  10:15 am - Virginia Tech, the first team to enter the race (after Tartan Racing was temporarily pulled out of position), has completed its first set of missions, and Odin is being prepped for its next run.  10:12 am - MIT is now in jeopardy, with its vehicle pausing along the off-road stretch of the course for at least a minute. It&amp;#039;s now lurching forward, but its possible that with sensors and algorithms designed for lane recognition and curb detection, a dirt road is too bewildering to navigate. This bot has the most sensors and onboard computers\u2014some 40 CPUs\u2014but none of that hardware is digging it out its current, swiftly deepening ditch.  10:03 am - An elimination rundown: Both Annie Way and IVS were kicked off the course for &amp;quot;thinking too long.&amp;quot; If a vehicle sits in one spot, either due to indecisive software or a full-on system crash, DARPA will disqualify it. And Terramax did not recover from its close call with a &amp;quot;structure,&amp;quot; and after a prolonged period, it was also kicked out. So while no actual collisions have occurred here yet, an inability to adapt to the environment has knocked out more than a quarter of the field. If the disqualified bots were human drivers, their only excuse would be a stroke, or an extreme bout of dementia.  9:50 am - Another team may be out of the running. Little Ben appears to have come very, very close to slamming into UCF&amp;#039;s vehicle. An all-pause order has gone out again, but according to a UCF team member, officials are in the process of pulling Ben Franklin&amp;#039;s Prius out of the race. UCF&amp;#039;s vehicle, by the way, puts along at a granny-like, maximum speed of 15 mph. The course speed limit is 30 mph. Their goal is to finish the race, period.  9:38 am - In one fell swoop, the field has gone from 11 robots to 8. OshKosh, Annie Way and IVS are out of the race. DARPA likes to change rules, break rules, cut slack and allow do-overs, so it&amp;#039;s possible these teams will end up back in. For now, though, all three vehicles are parked next to each other, most likely for good.  9:35 am - There should be at least one camera trained at Terramax at all times. Here&amp;#039;s why: during the all-pause situation, Terramax appeared to be frozen within inches of a pillar. It&amp;#039;s off the road, the chase vehicle is nowhere to be found, and although its possible that it was in the middle of a U-turn, it&amp;#039;s also possible that what everyone&amp;#039;s been waiting for\u2014Terramax-related violence\u2014almost happened off-camera. 9:30 am - Another jam, this one apparently caused by IVS, which has lost its nerve at a stop sign. Now, an all-pause order has stopped all 11 vehicles, as both Little Ben and Odin idle behind the trouble-making IVS vehicle, which got stuck before even making it onto the course.  9:25 am - All of the cars are back in motion, after a particularly dramatic snarl at a four-way intersection. Junior&amp;#039;s Stanford team is starting to get particularly annoying here in the main event tent, applauding every time the Passat shows up on-screen. It feels a lot like a high school graduation, except in this case the same person is bounding towards his diploma every five minutes, and that person is a robot, so honestly, who cares?  9:13 am - Cornell has started a robot traffic jam. Instead of waiting its turn at an intersection, the Cornell vehicle attempted to pass multiple cars lined up ahead of it, nearly causing a collision with team IVS, and is now sitting in the wrong lane, jerking its wheels around, and doing lots of nothing.  9:00 am - Two teams are in trouble. Team CarOLO&amp;#039;s vehicle veered off the road, and seem to be frozen. Elsewhere on the course, Team Annie Way has also stopped dead. No one&amp;#039;s been disqualified yet, but even if these bots recover, these long pauses don&amp;#039;t bode well for their overall performance scores. 8:55 am - According to GM, the reason for Tartan&amp;#039;s late start was interference from TV signals. Apparently, the chute that Boss was supposed to launch from was too close to broadcasting gear, and the signals were causing problems with the radar and LIDAR systems. I&amp;#039;ll try to get more specific info from Tartan Racing later in the day.  8:44 am - Ben Franklin is still in the race. DARPA has allowed it to make another try at completing its aborted turn, while the rest of the vehicles remain in place. The Mac mini-powered Prius is stuttering along, and just made it back onto the course. So for now, Ben Franklin has dodged a first-hour bullet.  8:40 am - All of the vehicles are on the course, but they&amp;#039;re currently paused. Ben Franklin&amp;#039;s Little Ben has broken down and is officially retired from the race. So until it can be manually driven off the course, everyone is stopped. That means there are now just 10 vehicles in competition.  8:32 am - Tartan is go. Boss, the biggest contender in the competition, is on the road, sirens blaring, and already showing its aggressive style. I&amp;#039;ve ridden in Boss, and I can attest to how hard this robot takes every turn. The commentators here, including the MythBusters&amp;#039; Hyneman, have taken notice of Boss&amp;#039;s hard-charging behavior. The bots are passing each other without incident, and IVS seem to be back in action.  8:24 am - The IVS vehicle has ground to a halt in front of a concrete barrier. It&amp;#039;s the first apparent problem (aside from Tartan&amp;#039;s non-start) from any of the vehicles, but since the vehicle isn&amp;#039;t actually on the course yet, it&amp;#039;s not clear whether judges will allow a restart, or simply penalize the team.  8:20 am - Terramax is gradually entering the competition, brakes squealing, robotic brain pausing. It&amp;#039;s a perfect blend of scary-big and lumbering-silly. This truck does not look capable of winning, but if nothing surprising happens today, watching this thing should be entertaining enough.  8:16 am - Fan-favorite Terramax, the massive OshKosh vehicle, is ready to roll, following a start from the coolest-named vehicle in the race, Cornell&amp;#039;s Skynet. The race is now officially interesting, since a collision with Terramax could lead to serious fireworks.  8:13 am - The starts are coming fast and furious now, while Virginia Tech&amp;#039;s Odin appears to have successfully handled a stop sign. By stopping, that is. However, Boss, the qualification frontrunner and former pole position-holder, is still in its chute. DARPA personnel and Tartan members are clustered around the Chevy Tahoe, but the vehicle has not been cleared to start the race.  8:07 am - Junior is out of the chute, cheered on (pointlessly, being a robot) by a massive cheer from the grandstands. Boss is not yet on the road, but Victor Tango&amp;#039;s Odin has made it through the traffic circle, followed closely by its DARPA escort. The race is officially underway. 7:55 am - An upset...sort of. Tartan Racing&amp;#039;s Boss was supposed to be launching first, but for reasons that are unclear, in about 5 minutes the pole position will belong to Virginia Tech&amp;#039;s Victor Tango, whose Odin vehicle was previously scheduled to start second.   7:40 am - The traffic vehicles have been released! These are the human-driven cars that have been outfitted with extra safety measures, such as a rollcage built to NASCAR standards and, as my relatlvely blurry shot above shows, an onboard fire extinguisher. 6:15 am - If a movie is ever made about the DARPA Urban Challenge, the Tartan Racing team will be the bad guys. It&amp;#039;s not that the Carnegie Mellon and General Motors-run team is the slightest bit malicious or underhanded. In fact, the opposite is probably true, since during the week-long national qualification event they&amp;#039;ve even pitched in to help other teams repair their vehicles. But Tartan appears to be the most heavily sponsored team, dwarfing even Volkswagen-backed arch-rival Stanford Racing, which won the Grand Challenge in 2005. Stanford has a decent-sized tent and the usual smattering of logos across Junior, their robotic Passat. But Tartan&amp;#039;s sprawling mini-compound includes a decked-out trailer, complete with a full rolling kitchen, borrowed from Target-sponsored Chip Ganassi Racing, which also helped provide the wealth of tools and even welders currently at Tartan&amp;#039;s disposal. When asked about the overall budget, Tartan Racing team leader William &amp;quot;Red&amp;quot; Whitaker said, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re priceless.&amp;quot; So how does Boss, the Ivan Drago of robot racing, compare to slightly plucky Junior, the inheritor to Stanford&amp;#039;s previous success? According to Stanford team member Henrik Dahlkamp, who worked on the Passat&amp;#039;s laser perception, the differences between the vehicles comes down to software, and driving style. &amp;quot;The CMU team really wants to win this one,&amp;quot; Dahlkamp said. &amp;quot;They accelerate more quickly. They&amp;#039;re more aggressive in general. Junior is more cautious.&amp;quot; As Dahlkamp points out, speed is not the only way to win, since any &amp;quot;moving violations&amp;quot; will be counted against the team&amp;#039;s overall performance. And the behavior of those cars comes down to software. Unlike the original DARPA Challenges, where many teams built cars and sensors from stratch, competitors tend to use stock vehicles and off-the-shelf sensors. So while Dahlkamp admits that &amp;quot;CMU is stronger in hardware,&amp;quot; the duel will really be over software. With very little difference between the team&amp;#039;s radar and LIDAR systems, the challenge won&amp;#039;t be perceiving the environment, but deciding how to act on it. While merging into moving traffic, for example, will Boss&amp;#039;s aggressive stance shave off precious seconds, or will Junior&amp;#039;s play-it-safe approach avoid a potentially race-ending collision? When asked about his major competitors, Tartan&amp;#039;s Director of Technology, Chris Urmson, said simply, &amp;quot;The biggest challenge is the course.&amp;quot; That is, the uncertainty of dealing with at least 30 human-driven cars, up to 10 other robot vehicles, and 10 missions scattered throughout a course that the team has only seen via satellite photo (which, DARPA has impishly pointed out, might be wrong). Although last week&amp;#039;s qualifying round was a preview of the missions ahead, the difficulty for the final event is likely to be ramped up. The weather could also be a factor, since the dust kicked up by winds during qualification already caused some problems for Boss, fooling its laser rangefinders during qualification. The winds are expected to be even worse today. But whether its old-fashioned bluster or technical confidence, Red Whittaker seems excited by the weather reports. &amp;quot;The winds are picking up,&amp;quot; he said yesterday. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s good news for us.&amp;quot; In sunless, pre-dawn Victorville, the winds are still calm. And whether or not the rivalry between Stanford and Tartan matters, the opening shot has already been fired: When the race begins at 8 am, the vehicle in pole position is Boss. Junior, ever-cautious, will launch third. In true Hollywood fashion, the bad guys are in the lead.  Virginia Tech&amp;#039;s Odin, which secured the pole position after technical difficulties delayed Tartan Racing&amp;#039;s start. Ben Franklin&amp;#039;s Little Ben MIT&amp;#039;s embattled Talos, which survived a crash during the second set of missions. Junior, back in manual mode, after finishing first. Boss crosses the finish line. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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