Grand Challenge Pegasus Team: Programming Pegasus Bridge 1 ?

[igorcarron at gmail.com]

Folks,

In a previous post[*] we made an announcement about the release of the
drive-by-wire code for our entry in the DARPA Grand Challenge. We will
do more in the future (including more data and more code). With regards
to our building the full autonomous code, things are going along well.
However, the somewhat large traffic on our web site had us thinking:

Provided we give a good HOW-TO/API, would there be any interest from
anybody to try their code on our vehicle as long as it is in Python and
safe to run ?

Many people think of way to deal with the programming side of
road-following and collision avoidance at 60 mph, but very few have the
time to build a vehicle that can make these concepts a reality. In
order to respond to this, I was thinking of a possibility where
somebody would submit a code, pay $200 and we would try it on a closed
circuit. Then the programmer would be getting all the data attendant to
the vehicle driving itself through the course following their programs?


The pros for us:
- raise some money for the vehicle
- identify potentially better algorithms -> identify people we would
like to associate ourselves with.

The cons for us:
- this is time not dedicated to focusing on the race
- issues with proprietary code/IP
- issues with safety
- coordination with many parties

Right now I am thinking the cons are overwhelming, what do y'all think
?


Igor.

[*]
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/5f78e2ecb3e9139d/af28daca5e385af3#af28daca5e385af3