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MEGAN EDWARDS: Adventures in Vegasland: Standing on the Corner, Watching All the Bots Go By
Although I was of course not privy to all the data and discussion that went into deciding who won the DARPA Urban Challenge, I couldn’t help getting an Animal Farm feel about how the teams were treated. Over the course of the weekend, it seemed obvious that while all the teams were nominally equal, some were considerably more equal than others. Stanford, for example, was not assigned to a pit area right next to a giant pile of dirt. The dust storm generated by every slight breeze can’t have been good for UCF’s computers, and they had no tent. Also, during the race, I observed MIT and Cornell both get the opportunity to restart their ‘bots when they stopped performing, but when Team AnnieWay’s car stopped for a minute or two, they were immediately cut from the competition. And then there was the issue of Carnegie-Mellon’s delayed start. Not only was the team allowed to keep on trying, they were allowed to replace hardware on their car. At the awards ceremony, Tony Tether placed blame for the ‘bot’s troubles on radio frequencies generated by the JumboTron nearby. While I was not the eye of God observing from on high, from my lowly spot on the sidelines it looked as though the teams from select major American research institutions were given numerous special indulgences.

Which of course is just a reminder that the DARPA Urban Challenge was not really a car race. In actuality, it was a clever way to spend tax money to get difficult and expensive research done as quickly and cheaply as possible. If, as I’m sure is true, Carnegie-Mellon’s research capabilities and likely results exceed those of the University of Central Florida, well, I guess it really does make more sense to throw cash and acclaim their way. As for the German teams, I find it easy to believe that DARPA found it in their own best interest to avoid giving any of them the purse, even though they had the required American sponsorship. Otherwise, they might have to explain why $2 million of U.S. taxpayer money earmarked for research here in the homeland was winging its way to Germany. As for the Stanford/Carnegie-Mellon rivalry, Stanford won the big check last time, and anyway, isn’t it just better to give the biggest eagle to a good old all-American Chevy rather than a Volkswagen? I couldn’t help wondering about all this once again when I learned that the officially published difference between the finish times of Stanford and Carnegie-Mellon was one second. Given all the times the ‘bots had to pause and all the judgment calls about whose fault any mishaps were, a lot of subjectivity went into coming up with that one second.

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