Monday, October 11, 2004

Our entry into the Grand Challenge 2005 DARPA race

Entries in this blog will feature some of the highlights and thoughts of our team members while we are designing, building and competing in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge Race.

In short, what is the DARPA race ?
The race is designed to evaluate the ability to design a system that would be autonomous and drive itself 150 miles in the desert in less than 10 hours. The general path of the vehicle is only provided to the contestants two hours before the start of the race. Man-made obstacles as well as a large percentage of off-road driving conditions are expected.

Team Description
The Pegasus Team is dedicated to solving extremely complex and hard problems using Open Source or Commercial Off-The Shelf software and hardware components. We are mostly located in Texas, the Brazos Valley to be exact.

Sponsors
We are mostly interested in sponsors that can provide hardware for our vehicle.

Why use Pegasus as the team's name ?

According to Greek Mythology

Pegasus was the winged horse of Bellerophon and Perseus. After the horse helped Bellerophon defeat the Chimaera, he then tried to ride the horse up into the tops of Mount Olympus. Zeus did not agree to this and sent a thunderbolt down to stun the horse into throwing the hero off. Pegasus was allowed to fly the rest of the way to the top of Mount Olympus


Only an unmanned Pegasus made it to the Olympus, hence our name.