challenge

SAN FRANCISCO--Get ready for toxic microbes to come packaged in a video game SKU.

Longtime and much-revered designer Steve Meretzsky's Bac Attack, a game that pits man's strategic ingenuity against the march of armies of bacteria, was the winner of Thursday's Game Design Challenge at the Game Developers Conference here.

The challenge, an annual GDC event hosted by GameLab CEO Eric Zimmerman, and a session that always plays to an energized, standing-room-only audience, traditionally pits three well-known designers against each other to come up with a concept for a game that meets some unusual criteria.

In past … Read more

There may yet be a day when the ubiquitous treadmill is replaced by the Wii at the gym, and the first step could very well be on the Wii Fit. The machine, as you'll recall, senses the movement of your entire body using a device that resembles a scale. And, like a scale, it can insult you by breaking if you weigh too much.

There's just one problem: The weight limit is 300 pounds. That may be fine for the petite Japanese, but it had better be able to handle more weight if it wants to succeed in … Read more

The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge represents a new frontier in autonomous vehicle technology. We were live onsite for the final of this year's event, which saw 11 robot cars compete in a six-hour contest in a simulated urban environment, complete with traffic, intersections, and parking lots. The rolling robots varied from a driverless 12-ton Oshkosh truck to an autonomous Toyota Prius. Check out our video diary from this weekend's event.

Carnegie Mellon University won the $2 million first place prize in DARPA's urban robot race this weekend, stealing the thunder from 2005's Grand Challenge leader, Stanford University.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge awarded a total of $3.5 million in prizes on Sunday, a day after the race. Stanford University took second place, with a $1 million cash prize, and Virginia Tech won $500,000 for third place.

The Urban Challenge was a six-hour test of driverless vehicles on the suburban roads of the former George Air Force Base in Oro Grande, Calif., where … Read more

ORO GRANDE, Calif.--Three robots finished the DARPA Urban Challenge within the allotted time Saturday, a new milestone in the development of self-driving vehicles.

In the running for the $2 million first prize and $1 million second prize are Stanford University's robotic VW Passat, Virginia Tech's modified Ford Escape Hybrid, and Carnegie Mellon's autonomous Chevrolet Tahoe. These teams finished the urban challenge's three missions within the allotted six hours and without significant problems.

Other teams, including the Ben Franklin Racing Team's robotic Toyota Prius, also completed the course, but it's uncertain whether it crossed … Read more

ORO GRANDE, Calif.--After two hours in the race, three teams have fallen out of the DARPA Urban Challenge, leaving eight driverless cars to finish the urban course.

So far, Team Oshkosh, Team Annieway, and Intelligent Vehicle Systems have been eliminated from the challenge for various reasons.

Team Oshkosh, a more than 24,000 pound Oshkost truck, nearly ran into an old shopping center here at the former George Air Force Base after it ran over a parking lot curb. The team of Intelligent Vehicle Systems, a collaboration with Honeywell, Ford, and Delphi, had difficultly negotiating what to do at … Read more

ORO GRANDE, Calif.--This is the experiment of all robot experiments.

In 30 minutes, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will unleash 11 driverless cars on a 10-plus mile course here at the former George Air Force Base, as part of its $3.5 million robot race, the Urban Grand Challenge. It will be the first time DARPA has tested fully autonomous cars (with "no animals or midgets inside") driving on a course with other robots, as part of a test of the technology's capabilities as well as its safety, according to Norman Whitaker, DARPA Urban … Read more