Team Jefferson

Click on the photo to get your own Tommy Jr. on Second Life, courtesy of Sun Microsystems.

We've made it to the semi-finals, and it's been busy, busy, busy. As we have time, we'll do updates, and on a regular basis we'll post photos to our Flickr photo stream. You can see the most recent photos on the right-hand side.

A lot of what we're doing with the urban challenge is very focused on the moment. We have to get the car moving, we have to keep it from running into things, and so on. For the challenge, of course, this is vital. There's only a certain amount of time for us to do things in, and plenty to do. So we stay focused.

Still, for all its complexities, the Urban Challenge is very simple compared with real life. Oh, from an abstract viewpoint, cars are just boxes that move around other boxes, and for the Challenge, we can think of it that way. However, in real life, everyone who's driven knows this isn't entirely true. It's more true in some places than others, but it's still not everything.

Let's take a 4-way intersection as an example, with everyone having a stop sign. Legally, it's a very simple procedure. You drive up to the stop, and see if anyone else is there. If someone was there first, you wait until the people who had arrived earlier go, then you go. Very simple, no problems there.

When you add people into the mix, though, things change.

From our blog at Scionlife.com

Today, I thought I'd tell everyone about some of the hardware that we're using in (and out) of Tommy Jr. But first...

We've made it to the semifinals! Wooooo!

Okay, that's out of the way. John, our "Satanic Mechanic", has told you a bit about what we have in Tommy. Of course, he would know, as he's put most of it in. Let's start with sensing. In order for the car to drive itself, it has to be able to see what's around it, know where it is, and know where it's going. As Tommy Jr. doesn't have eyes and an inner ear for balance, we have to make up for that in a variety of ways.

From our blog at Scionlife.com

What's the craziest modification you've considered doing to your Scion? Full-kitchen with running water and gas stove? Installing a hot tub? Replacing all of the body panels with flat-screen televisions and cameras to make it turn invisible? (That last one's probably a bad idea, if it worked)

I'm a project manager for Perrone Robotics and we, along with some students from the University of Virginia, have decided to modify our Scion xB in a way that is maybe not as crazy as the ideas above, but maybe is a little crazier.

We want our Scion to drive itself around a city.