[yellowdog-announce] The Yellow Dog Drives Autonomous Jeep at DARPA Challenge

[Announce List for all Terra Soft products (moderated)]

Yellow Dog and Racing Enthusiasts,

In early October, Terra Soft Solutions was engaged by Axion Racing to assist 
with the integration of a Sony PlayStation3 running Yellow Dog Linux 
into "Spirit", Axion's fully autonomous Jeep Grand Cherokee which is this 
week competing in the qualifying rounds for the DARPA autonomous vehicle 
challenge in Victorville, California.

Integral to the on-board, realtime image processing system, the YDL PS3 rides 
atop a set of 1U rackmount servers inside Spirit which drives itself through 
simulated city traffic and obstacles during the qualifying rounds, currently 
underway.

In just ten days, Terra Soft's Bill Mueller ported, wrote, and optimized code 
for Yellow Dog Linux on a PS3 which is connected to an RGB camera. This 
realtime image processing system enables the autonomous vehicle to "see" the 
street terrain and avoid obstacles. The RGB camera is tied into the Axion 
arbitrator and other computerized sensors to help determine the best path for 
the 3/4 ton Jeep. All sensors vote and then send commands to actuators that 
control steering, gas, and brakes for the vehicle. For safety, the brakes are 
always on, unless released by software commands that then motivate the gas 
pedal.

Axion "Spirit" is the only autonomous vehicle to participate in all three 
DARPA Challenges: was one of only 7 teams to qualify for the 2004 Challenge 
and was the 3rd best team qualifier for the 2005 Challenge.

The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge qualifications are in progress now at 
Victorville, California, George Air Force Base, October 26-31. Open to the 
public, the final race will be held this Saturday, 4 November 2007.

For more information about the work Terra Soft conducted, visit:
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/showcase/cellebration/axion/tss.shtml

To learn more about the DARPA challenge and race, visit:
http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/

	--TSS Staff