Team terramax and the DARPA grand challenge: a general overview

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is an agency of the United States Government, has issued a challenge to developers of off-road autonomous ground vehicles to design and build a vehicle that can complete a lengthy and difficult off road course across desert southwest areas of the United States. A one million dollar US prize is available to the team that completes the 200-250 mile course first and in less than 10 hours. This paper describes the Team TerraMax entry to the March, 2004 race event. Vehicle hardware and drive by wire actuators, internal and external sensing systems, sensor fusion, and high and low level control systems are described.