California Business Minute™

Hi, I am Tim Johnson and welcome to the California Business Minute.

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, DARPA announced the 36 semi-finalists
that have the opportunity to compete in the autonomous vehicle (robotic cars) ‘Urban Challenge’. 

The race which is the third of three autonomous competitions sponsored by DARPA will take
place at the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville on November 3, 2007 at the former
George Air Force Base. The qualifications events will take place at the same location October 26-31. 
The top 20 teams will move on to the November 3 competition competing for cash prizes; $2 million
for first place; $1 million for second and $500,000 for third.

This Challenge is far more difficult than the previous two that involved navigating and driving across
open terrain. The Urban Challenge involves the navigation and operation in traffic in an urban setting.

During the qualifications events, the vehicles must operate entirely autonomously without human
intervention and obey all California traffic laws while performing maneuvers such as merging in and
out of traffic, navigating traffic circles, stopping at the indicated stop signs and signals.

There are 6 teams from California, more than any state.  They include the following: Axiom Racing,
Westlake Village; Golem Group, Santa Monica; SciAutonics/Auburn Engineering, Thousand Oaks;
Stanford Racing Team, Stanford; Team Annie Way, Palo Alto; Team Caltech, Pasadena

I am Tim Johnson and this has been the California Business Minute.

For further information about the event go to the website; www.darpa.mil