APPLICATIONS

Visualization and storage technology from Silicon Graphics Inc. is helping a Carnegie Mellon University-led team to prepare for a 150-mile race this fall sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that is designed to demonstrate the efficacy of autonomous ground vehicles to navigate treacherous desert roads and trails without human drivers in the least amount of time. Ultimately, the goal of the DARPA field test is to accelerate research and development in robotic ground vehicles that will help save soldiers' lives on the battlefield. Earlier this month, DARPA announced that 40 teams including the Red Team were selected to advance to the semifinals of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous ground vehicle competition. DARPA selected the semifinalists from a field of 118 entrants. The Red Team's H1ghlander and Sandstorm vehicles were both selected to participate in a week of qualifications in late September and early October at the California Speedway in Fontana that will narrow the field to 20 competitors. The winner-take-all race is scheduled for October 8 in the Mojave Desert and will include both natural and man-made obstacles throughout the racecourse. The team that develops an autonomous ground vehicle that finishes the designated route the fastest within the 10-hour time limit will receive a $2 million prize. Because the exact route will not be revealed to competing teams until two hours before the race begins, the ability to quickly, effectively and accurately plan the best route will be a strategic advantage for achieving success on race day. A four-processor Silicon Graphics Prism power configuration and a two- processor Silicon Graphics Prism deskside configuration, each with two graphics pipes, will provide Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team with the computing muscle and visualization capabilities to enable the quickest route planning for its two robotic vehicles competing in this year's DARPA Grand Challenge. The Red Team uses a combination of archived terrain data and preplanned route locations referenced and tracked via the Global Positioning System (GPS), as well as on-board sensors to help decide the best path and how to overcome obstacles along the way. A 10TB SGI InfiniteStorage TP9500 storage array from SGI and Engenio will store satellite imagery data of the route. The Red Team will preload thousands of miles of terrain data of the Nevada desert race site to plan optimum speed and route. The entire racecourse will be driven in simulation on the terrain model to ensure the best, most efficient route for the vehicles. The Red Team will rely on the industry-leading speed of the TP9500 to readily process the satellite data for mapping to the final race route. "SGI's contribution to the Red Team with its powerful Prism and InfiniteStorage systems has huge advantages for the planning and simulation that ultimately determines the intended route and speed of our unmanned vehicles at race time," said Carnegie Mellon University's William "Red" Whittaker, captain of the Red Team. "With ready access to the satellite data and SGI's advanced visualization features and Intel Itanium 2 processors, Silicon Graphics Prism is truly a high-performance system that blazes through our biggest and most demanding sets of terrain data, providing our team with a highly accurate map of the route and what we believe will be the winning edge for our vehicles to run a successful race." "Although the DARPA Grand Challenge is designed to accelerate R&D in autonomous ground vehicles for defense applications, the Red Team's work will also help to fuel an innovative new class of robotic ground vehicles for a host of future civilian and commercial uses," said Paul Temple, senior business development manager, SGI Federal. "We are excited to contribute to that innovation through SGI's ability to rapidly digest and visualize multi- terabyte terrain data sets, giving the Red Team a powerful tool and groundbreaking insights for planning its race routes. The Red Team's productivity has been transformed by Prism's lightning fast ability to load data sets at multi-gigabyte-per-second rates that will no doubt serve the team well in the 'golden hour' before the DARPA Grand Challenge when time is of the essence." On October 8, the Red Team's goal is to put its two vehicles on the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge starting line and one in the winner's circle. The 40- member Red Team, which includes sponsors such as AM General, Boeing, Caterpillar, Intel and SAIC, will compete in this year's Grand Challenge with two entries based on AM General's Humvee vehicle design. The Red Team's Sandstorm vehicle will return to defend its 2004 distance and speed record, and a new H1 design dubbed "H1ghlander" will also compete. Additional information about the 2005 Grand Challenge can be found on DARPA's website at its Web site.