Today's format was a repeat of yesterday's. Mike Myers and I hit reconaissance in Area A first thing: merging into moving traffic, which was today's challenge for Team Jefferson.

Professor Cahen worked recon in Area B, which is tomorrow morning's challenge for the team.

Area A is cool to watch. A large loop of moving cars that start and stop on command: the tightly choreographed stunt drivers serving as robot fodder. The way this group would move and halt reminded me of the Visa commercial which has the diners coming to a screeching halt when some hapless customer uses cash.

The robot makes a smaller loop: moving with the traffic, then cutting across it and cutting into it in a series of sequential left turns.

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Robots had various degrees of success "shooting the gap". Caltech seemed to be overcautious - detection of the barrier wall part-way through the turn whould cause a halt. This would expose the vehicle to oncoming traffic, a stop, and an angry honk from the stunt driver.

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We did see a moment of contact. Blue Ford Taurus number 168 was impacted in its rear corner as it tried to scoot out of the way. I believe Axion was the perp. This created a delay to check health of the driver and vehicle.

Scoring was relatively simple: you were scored for hitting the stop-lines, merging without impeding thru traffic, and completing maximum loops.

The best robots were handling the merge and timing well. Others were having trouble with the left turn, which was admittingly tight against the K-rail. CMU's Tartan team seemed to have no trouble with the merge itself, but had trouble with the basic challenge: navigating the loop it would detect obstacles on the curves.

Around 11 AM I headed over to offsite testing to brief Paul on Area A. Jarvis and Jeff Ebert were still busily working on the camera software. Krishna had flown back East and is helping remotely. They've been making progress.

The Sun had been getting brighter, and I would say it had hit nearly 100o F by noon. The sun was so bright, that when we needed Internet access, I had to set up my Verizon enabled laptop deep in the trunk to make the screen visible. This picture is not Jeff Ebert digging through luggage: its Jeff programming in the trunk.

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I hopped in the robot with Paul so I could brief him on Area A while the robot drove us around, and Paul intermittently scanned its log file monitor. Paul was working on various elements of route planning, detection, and speed control. He was also changing parameters like lane width. I probably don't need to say how nerve wracking it is to watch him programming and compiling in a moving car 45 minutes before a trial.

At one point, I casually stuck my elbow out the window, which caused Tommy Jr. to gyrate and swerve left, spewing several pages of log items. "Get your arm back in the car, its seeing it as an obstacle"

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Speaking of trials, Darpa called us and said they wanted us on site at 1:30 PM - about 45 minutes before our plan, so we broke camp in order to race over to the base.

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This is what the glove compartment to the robot looks like:

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I helped muster the robot, then took off my vest and gave it to John Coleman so he could do some minor mechanical checks "in the chute". In the spectator area, I found that Don and Judy Perrone had arrived from New Jersey via Vegas. Don and Judy are Paul's parents.

Apparently the couple had commandeered Norm Whittaker's golf cart - Norm is the Darpa program manager who runs the challenge. Judy said he had a somewhat bewildered look as they drove off past him, and that she just said "We're old and tired and we need a lift".

Tommy's run was imperfect. When he approached the first merge, he seemed overcautious and took a full minute to advance, nudging himself forward. It may be the case that he felt there was an obstacle in his defined intersection - such as a post or barrier. We are still assessing the data.

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He did finally enter traffic, but he hit the curb on the far stretch. A number of robots have been having trouble in this spot, and we suspect there could be an issue with Darpa's mission file. In fact, just as I sit in the pit writing this, our neighbor Golem Group is having its robot towed into the pit. It hit the same curb and flattened its tire.

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For us, Tommy had about three laps with two resets. The best teams made ten. Back in the pit, we touched up the robot, took a briefing on Area B from George Cahen, and crystalized software and testing priorities.

The robot had its vision and lane detection camera mounted for its Area B test tomorrow, and Jarvis and the rest of the vision guys set about loading new software. We sent the robot to the J.D. Pierce site for further testing, with Jarvis riding shotgun, still loading software.

The camera software is the only module written in C++, for a couple of different reasons: the hardware's API is written for C, and some of the canned image processing routines are also C-based.

Sun's Real Time Java has been a god send for the team. Its open, flexible, hardware-independent structure has enabled 1 to 2 developers to build an autonomous robot in just a matter of months... and while the image routine has been riddled with C-related bugs and memory leaks, the programmers have reminded us numerously that Java is robust, self-annealing, and un-prone to error.

We are eagerly anticipating a visit from the marketing folks from Sun - Dave Hofert and Jean Eliot - who are arriving for tomorrow.

The weather has turned cool as the rays grow long. Its the clearest day we've seen out here - and it feels beautiful. We can see the mountains. We can breathe the air. Even the folks at Golem are smiling as they change their tire. Generators are clicking on, and stadium lights are shining. As the day ends, and the evening begins, the pits continue to crackle with activity.

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