October 24, 2007
Day 1-- Victorville
Dear Blog-osphere-ites? I apologize for my naivety of sorts in this medium, but I hope you will enjoy hearing about the Urban Challenges, our trip, and the results of our robot DEXTER's performance. It has been a long road to these last two weeks, and every team member will tell you that we have come a long way-- in only a year have we acquired a braindead robot, and taught it to drive to the best of our abilities. And to think we were so very excited the first time we got 'him' to drive just a straight line.
We've made our way to Victorville, CA, home of only a few thousand people, and the well-news-covered California fires. In fact, we can see the fires from our hotel parking lot (!!). Tomorrow's tasks will be to 1) fetch DEXTER from Roadway, 2) get our Route Network Definition File (RNDF) (ie, the map) from DARPA, 3) view the map over satellite pictures 4) set up camp (more on this in the next paragraph) and 5) give DEXTER a new skin.
You should see our RV... wait... in fact, perhaps you can once I figure out how to work this guy.:-) We have a beautiful 38' mobile command unit (and entertainment suite). Looking forward to driving that around.