Since we were unable to fully demonstrate the abilities of our autonomous vehicle at our July 9 site visit, we spent the last two weeks debugging and stress testing our system. As a result, we were able to re-create the site visit and complete all four of the required missions. Videos of our ’second site visit’ are available from the links below.

Video links:
Summary video (13.7 MB wmv)
Full video (102.8 MB wmv)

We had our site visit on this past Monday afternoon, July 9th, from 2 to 6 pm. Unfortunately, we did not perform as well as we expected. Various problems that had not been encountered during previous testing plagued us throughout the afternoon. As the hours wore on and the 90+ degree heat wore us out, we continued to battle these unforseen issues.

At the end of the day, we were able to complete about 50% of each of the runs. We successfully demonstrated most of the required behaviors, including staying in our lane, stopping at a stop line, passing a parked car and obeying mission parameters. For the times when our system worked properly, our performance was very consistent.

We will find out the final results of our site visit evaluation, which is also based on our Technical Paper, on August 10.

All of the Princeton University Urban Challenge Team members would like to extend hearty thanks to all of the family, friends and supporters who showed up to cheer us along at this big milestone in our project. In addition, PAVE gratefully acknowledges the FMC corporation for allowing us to use their facilities for our site visit.

Also, many thanks to the various media crews that have covered our conitnuing efforts in the Urban Challenge. Recent additions to our publicity page include Kevin Coughlin’s article in the Newark Star-Ledger, and news segments by Michelle Won of WZBN-TV and Patrick Regan of NJN News.