June-July 2004: RASCAL In Summer School?

Well, not really...but RASCAL is at Auburn University for the summer, where students and various staff are working to help improve the technology and controls of the vehicle itself. Auburn University was a key partner in the SciAutonics team for GC2004, and will be instrumental in helping us develop a competitive edge with our autonomous vehicle technology.

Meanwhile, here at home base in Thousand Oaks, team members are continuing work on different aspects of testing, data collection, and software, including capturing measurement without lidars and improving our sensor data processing.
June 8, 2004: Grand Challenge 2005!!!

DARPA announced that it will hold Grand Challenge 2005 on October 8, 2005.

There will also be a "Participants' Conference" taking place in Anaheim, CA on August 14, 2004 to jump start preparations for Grand Challenge 2005. Representatives from the SciAutonics Grand Challenge team will be attending this informational conference.
March 2004
SciAutonics, LLC, Teamed with Auburn University, Successfully Participates in the 2004 DARPA GRAND CHALLENGE!!!

Many thanks to our hard-working team of dedicated members, sponsors, and supporters - all who made our participation in the Grand Challenge on March 13, 2004 possible!

Although no one team was able to take home the $1 Million dollar prize this year, SciAutonics was extremely pleased with the autonomous showing of RASCAL at the Grand Challenge. We were very excited to be among the talented and prominent teams that had also worked so hard to make it to the final rounds. The Grand Challenge event successfully demonstrated new technology that had only been developed in the past year.

Moving forward in the spirit of innovation, SciAutonics plans to go full steam ahead with participation in the next Grand Challenge - slated to take place within 18 months, but has yet to be officially announced by DARPA. We feel that after Grand Challenge 2004, not only do we have a solid foundation of technology, ideas, and resources to build upon in creating a superior autonomous vehicle - but the focus, vision, and drive to make it all a reality!
March 13, 2004: The Big Day of the Grand Challenge

Our volunteers worked tirelessly for the weeks and months leading up to the big event! In the end, our team and our vehicle managed to persevere through the qualifying events. Bright and early in the morning on March 13th, 2004, we all cheered on RASCAL from the stands at Slash X. RASCAL had an impressive, solid run of 0.75 miles before the hard drive failed. At that point, RASCAL was e-stopped by the DARPA chase car.
January 21, 2004

A lot of technical work has been done in the past months. We established exciting new partnerships, and we are moving forward to complete our autonomous systems. An unfortunate incident in December - a house fire - caused some scare, but it did not threaten our vehicle, and we proceeded further in developing and implementing our approach for the Grand Challenge.