Stanford's retrofitted VW wins DARPA race

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: DENI CONNOR ON SERVERS
10/20/05
Today's focus: Stanford's retrofitted VW wins DARPA race

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* DARPA Grand Challenge winners
* Links related to Servers
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: Stanford's retrofitted VW wins DARPA race

By Deni Connor

An unmanned Volkswagen Touareg R5, powered by seven Pentium M
computers, won last week's DARPA Grand Challenge
<http://www.grandchallenge.org/>. The vehicle, nicknamed
Stanley, completed the 132-mile route in less than 7 hours.

The Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency's Challenge was to
prove that autonomous ground vehicles could travel long
distances across difficult terrain at militarily relevant
speeds. No vehicle was able to complete the course in the
augural Challenge last year. This year, Stanley, a vehicle
retrofitted by Stanford University, started and ended the race
in the parking lot of Buffalo Bill's Casino in Primm, Nev., on
the California-Las Vegas border after looping around the Mojave
Desert and descending over the 3,459-feet high Beer Bottle Pass.

Stanley <http://www.stanfordracing.com/> is a stock,
Diesel-powered Volkswagen Touareg R5, modified with full-body
skid plates and a reinforced front bumper. The vehicle is
managed by GPS and wheel-speed estimation software. Four laser
range finders, a stereo camera, radar and a monocular vision
system powered Stanley across the course. Stanley won big in
this race - a whopping $2 million payout.

Only four other cars out of the 23 in the race finished the
course. Two were from Carnegie Mellon and one was the Grey Team
from Metairie, La. The last vehicle to finish didn't do so until
the next morning after DARPA officials repeatedly asked the
vehicle's team to stop because its manned chase vehicle kept
breaking down.

Stanley's human team was funded by Mohr Davidow Ventures, Red
Bull, Volkswagen, Intel and Honeywell, as well as start-up
Android.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. Cisco finally brings security push to LAN
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlservers9027>
2. Skype: Hazardous to network health?
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlservers7882>
3. WiMAX just around the corner
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlservers9247>
4. McAfee, Omniquad top anti-spyware test
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlservers6971>
5. Sourcefire discloses buffer-overflow vulnerability in Snort
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlservers9248>

_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Deni Connor

Deni Connor is a Senior Editor at Network World covering
storage, Unix, Novell, Macintosh and IT in Healthcare. You can
reach her at <mailto:dconnor@nww.com>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Avocent
Network World Executive Guide: Reviewing Trends and Insights for
SMB Executives

Life is different for IT professionals at small and mid-sized
businesses, which don't have the luxury of hiring legions of
network experts. Read how network executives are keeping a firm
footing on an ever-shifting product landscape. Learn about
trends and insights surrounding VoIP and VPNs; plus get
commentaries from leading experts on storage strategies for
smaller businesses.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=117594
_______________________________________________________________
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