From WIRED news...

Gator Nation's "NaviGATOR" seemed downright hostile, cutting off a DARPA car on a left turn, and then gunning across the next intersection, very nearly nailing a DARPA car in the trunk. Officials blew the horn and dejected team members got the "better luck next time" handshake from Tether right then and there.

- http://blog.wired.com/defense/urban_challenge/index.html


Thanks wired.

....and time to sleep.

So we've been elimanted. Its been fun, Ill post more when I feel like it.

Knight Rider or Gator Nation?

Go(ing) west!

We're finally out of Virginia and heading west!

To recap the past few days:
Virginia sucks
Fredericksburg sucks
Hooters girls work hard to sell calendars
The fort's on base bbq place is to be avoided at all costs:
"We ran out of pulled pork, so this is... Different... Pulled pork then the other guy with you had... It's good. Its florida pulled pork"... " oh ok...."
Were totally stealing a guy for our grad program


Today in particular has been a loooong day. We started at about 5am packing up and checking out. We got to the base around 8am, set up for our gazillionith dry run with the NaviGator, ran it perfect twice, and headed off to find someplace warm to sit in till noonish for the REAL demo at 1pm. Our first demo, without the VIPs we wanted to impress went off without a problem. Then the VIPs came for the second demo and we had a computer failure. Ugh, not good.

So now Im on a plane, slightly delerious (apologies for the tense, POV, etc. constantly changing in this post), and hoping to get to sleep by 4am tonight. We flew from richmond -> charlotte -> phoenix ->Ontario where, hopefully, two vans will be waiting to pick us up.... Ya know, if they make it through the RAGING FIRES in cali.

When we get to cali, we'll take a look at how the highlander guys are going. Everyone else should already be out there (25 of us total).

To wrap up, miss everyone back home, VA sucks, cali should be aweswome, Im turning 21 in vegas, and I haven't looked at a single piece of schoolwork in about a week now.

Pictures explained:
Autonomous Solutions' vehicle badass truck that follows a lead vehicle autonomously.
Our tractor-trailer on loan from tyndall air force base.
6 of us plus luggage crammed in a minivan.
The garden Yetti. That's right, Yetti.

:)

Dear Virginia, you suck

Dear Virginia,

You are wet, cold, boring, tiring and crappy. Basically, you suck.

Sincerely ,
Jim

Ontime? Never!

We made it onto the plane with ohhhh 15 sec to spare. Someones telling me to turn off my phone. Fine, be that way.

All systems go!

The old autonomous car is in a trailer headed to virginia and the autonomous highlander is making its way across the country (Fear not highways, its in the back of the Robotics trailer). So Nick, Eric, Greg, Dave, and Dave's 12 year old son are making the road trip out to california starting today. Just to point out however:

Old Navigator - Must be in Virginia by the 25th, left yesterday.
New Highlander - Must be in California by the 24th. Left today.

Makes perfect sense. I'm guessing I'm going to find a very tired crew when I get to cali.

If you haven't said goodbye to me, I officially hate you. Ok, maybe not. I'm leaving in 7 hours and haven't packed yet. Bad blog, stop making me do you. Ooh cigars! I'll pack later...

WARNING: STUDENT GOV'T HUMOR AHEAD. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
Will Jim make it to the airport on time? Will the team win the $2 Million Dollars? Will I ever pack? What will Jim do when he gets back? Will Jim make this the new SG Observer? Will Progress hack yet another blog? Where is my other shoe?

T - 6 Days

So I've had some requests to start a blog about the trip. It suddenly hit me that I'm leaving in 6 days for three weeks, and that I've never been anywhere for three weeks. While I'm trying to figure out what the fail-over tree for our computing environment should look like, it hits me that I can't bring enough clothes. I need to like, do laundry on this trip. What the heck do I pack? What do you wear in Vegas? Whats the weather like in Virginia and LA? All of this? No idea.

By the way, I encourage you all to go on trips funded by UF. Do you know you get a per diem? Like 50 bucks a day or something. Yay gambling mon... er... food money.... yeah....

Oh, and look forward to the "I'm 21, drunk, and driving across the country" post coming Nov. 7th.

Back to whatever Dr. Circuits Professor is talking about.