Expeditor

The International Robot Racing Federation has announced that they will be sponsoring the Open Challenge, a contest of autonomous ground vehicles approximately 300 miles long to take place in April. Whichever team's vehicle passes the finish line first will win a prize of $1 million.

DARPA has announced a similar contest to be held on the 8th of October, 2005, this one with a $2 million prize.

Our team, The Prodigies is building one of these autonomous ground vehicles. We call it the Expeditor. Basicly it will drive itself from point A to point B while avoiding obstacles in between.

Expeditor is a sandrail based vehicle that employs several sensors including a camera, a GPS, accelerometers, and a rotary encoder. Neural networks are used for image processing allowing road-following and object-avoiding behavior. The GPS is used to keep Expeditor on the course. If there is a GPS outage, Expeditor keeps track of its position using INS or a rotary encoder mounted on its axle along with steering information.

Our sponsors are VIA Technologies, Roboteq, EG Electronics, SpaceAge Control, and Vortex Solution.

This is a work in progress. We're planning on having the first field test soon.

View our website at teamprodigies.com . Description: Autonomous Ground Vehicle