DARPA Grand Challenge

Given only GPS coordinates, the autonomous vehicles had to negotiate a 132 mile

course through the rough California desert is less than 10 hours.

The Grand Challenge 2005 was held on October 8, 2005 in the desert. The Stanford Racing Team won the $2 million prize with the winning time of 6 hours, 53 minutes. A total of Kve teams completed the Grand Challenge course which was 132 miles over desert terrain.

During 2004 and 2005 QuickSilver servo motors were used on several vehicles.

Austin Robot Technology, Inc DARPA Grand Challenge 2005

Steering is provided via a 34HC-1 servo motor. The servo is capable of operation at 12VDC (up to 48V DC). The motor is programmable via an RS232 interface and has an integrated encoder with 16,000 line/rev resolution. A 10:1 gear reduction was used in order to achieve the right torque and speed combination. The motor and gear head are mounted under the steering column as shown.

California Institute of Technology 2004

The brakes were controlled by a linear actuator, which was connected to the brake linkage by a steel cable attached behind the brake pedal. The actuator was driven by a Quicksilver servo motor. The servo’s position was set via a serial command from the main computer.