A silver GMC truck — representing more than a year of work by 30 students and $12,000 in equipment — slowly made its way across West Windsor fields Friday, watched by members of the Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Then it crashed straight into a garbage can.
The car in question — "Prospect 11" — is an autonomous vehicle competing in DARPA's 2005 Grand Challenge, a race consisting of a 175-mile obstacle course over desert terrain. The vehicle must complete the course without a driver or remote-control guidance.
"The test was really extraordinarily successful," said Ben Essenburg '05, a mechanical engineering major who worked on the car's mechanical systems, such as steering and brakes. "We were hugely successful with staying within the boundaries and had very good times."
During the site visit, Prospect 11 was given three runs to successfully navigate a 200 meter-long course with two randomly-placed obstacles. The car was judged on distance traveled, time taken to complete the course, avoidance of obstacles and how well it stayed within the eight meter-wide boundaries.
Princeton's team has already made it past the first cut in the competition. DARPA will use the results of Friday's test to determine if Princeton's team can enter the third and final stage of the $2 million competition. The team expects to learn the results in early June.
Though the car failed to complete any of the trials without hitting obstacles, it did successfully complete the S-shaped course in 56 seconds on its second run.
In fact, the car was so successful in navigating the course on its own that it refused to stop. Bryan Cattle '07 needed to chase the car down and jump through its window to stop it.
Despite a few setbacks during the site visit, members of the team are optimistic about their chances of getting to the final round.
"I'm pretty happy; I think we have a chance to make the final forty," said Ben Klaber '05, who has been working on the control and software team of Prospect 11 as part of his thesis. "[The judges] know about a lot of our plans to improve the car and I'm sure they can see our potential."
When the 10 seniors currently working on the car graduate, plans for improvement and possible preparations for the final race will be left in the hands of the underclassmen. They will be working full-time on campus all summer under operations research and financial engineering professor Alain Kornhauser, the group's adviser.
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