Lind Electronics is mentioned within this article. Below is an introduction to DARPA and the portion of the write up that included Lind Electronics. The entire article can be found online at:
http://www.3rd-st.com/2005_darpa_grand_challenge.htm

What is DARPA?
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). The agency manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions. DARPA's reputation for technical excellence stems from its determination to seek out the best solutions to problems through forward-looking investments in research and technologies.

What is the DARPA Grand Challenge?

Created in response to a Congressional and DoD mandate, DARPA Grand Challenge is a field test to accelerate research and development in autonomous ground vehicles that will help save American lives on the battlefield. The Grand Challenge brings together individuals and organizations from industry, the R&D community, government, the armed services, academia, students, backyard inventors, and automotive enthusiasts in the pursuit of a technological challenge

DARPA's mission is to leverage ingenuity and research to develop transformational technologies that give our armed forces a decisive edge. One promising area is that of autonomous ground vehicles which will save lives by performing many of the hazardous battlefield functions that currently place our troops in harm's way.

The first Grand Challenge was held in the Mojave Desert in March 2004, but there was no winner. The second Grand Challenge was held in Primm, NV on October 8, 2005, and the Stanford Racing Team won the $2 million prize by successfully completing 132 mile desert course in the shortest elapsed time under 10 hours – six hours, 53 minutes and 58 seconds.

What is the purpose of the Grand Challenge?

DARPA's mission is to create technologies for future application on the battlefield. In recent years, Congress and the Department of Defense have envisioned unmanned vehicles teamed with people to create efficient, integrated, agile and cost-effective forces that will lower the risk to American life.

The Grand Challenge is a bold effort to draw widespread attention to the technology issues associated with autonomous vehicles and to generate discontinuous breakthroughs in performance. The event is designed to attract and challenge the most capable and innovative companies, institutions, and entrepreneurs in America. Many of these organizations have never before been involved with defense work, and their participation is helping the men and women in our armed forces.

Tracking Data Network and Site Supervision Network
While all robot vehicles ('bots) competing in the Grand Challenge were autonomous and not remote controlled, it was still necessary to be able to assert emergency stop and pause commands in the event that a 'bot left the course, went out of bounds, or in case a faster 'bot was to be allowed to pass a slower 'bot. Each 'bot was followed along the course by a Dodge Pickup Control Vehicle which could run, pause, or disable its companion 'bot.


DARPA utilized a vehicle emergency stop and tracking system designed and built by OmniTech Robotics, and supported by SRS Technologies. One of the features of the E-Stop system is that it transmits accurate vehicle location several times per second from every E-Stop equipped vehicle on the course. The tracking system is near real-time, with position updates on the order of 500msec. Each of the four tracking nodes could be receiving data from a substantial number of vehicles at any time, with the probability that multiple nodes would be receiving the same data and sending it downrange, so the aggregate data traffic across the network could easily equal 4 times the actual data. There were 20 competitor vehicles and 20 control vehicles all sending location data, resulting in a substantial amount of data being gathered and transmitted back to the COC.

At each of our comm sites, an E-Stop node gathered tracking telemetry and packaged it for transmission to the COC as UDP multicast traffic. The node consists of an E-Stop data radio and a laptop computer. The laptop conditions the data and acts as an RS232-to-IP translator. To power the laptops efficiently from 24VDC prime power, we used Lind Electronics DC-DC converters. These converters gave us a substantial efficiency advantage over an inverter or UPS.