Tales of the Golem; or, the Modern Epimetheus

I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me

It's curious that, as of this writing, the public list of DARPA Urban Challenge teams only has 14 15 entries. And it's a list of losers, sort of: I think only 4 of the 14 15 (Golem Group, Axion Racing, Mojavaton, and University of Florida) even made it to the finals of the DARPA Grand Challenge last year, and of those only the University of Florida is a large institution.

It's not that successful and/or eminent institutions such as CMU, Caltech, Cornell, MIT, the Ford Motor Company, et cetera, have not sent in entries. I know that they have. I guess they just can't be bothered to send in a photo and be listed on the public team roster.

posted by Richard Mason @ Sunday, August 06, 2006