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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Canadian High Tech Company Invited to Compete For $2Million US Military PrizeOttawa team the only non-American team still in the running.Ottawa, ON June 9, 2005 - The US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced Monday that Autonosys, an Ottawa based high tech company, will be among the semi-finalists in the Grand Challenge, a 150 mile race across the desert for driverless robotic vehicles. To advance to the semi-finals, Autonosys had
to beat out 195 entries representing teams from around the world.
To pass the first hurdle,
teams had to deliver a video of their
vehicles to DARPA in March. Based
on the videos, DARPA then selected a shortlist of 118 teams for a visit from
DARPA staff in May. At the site
visit, the team had to show their vehicle navigating a narrow 8m wide course
while avoiding obstacles placed randomly on the course by the DARPA officials. After the site visits, DARPA selected
Autonosys along with 39 other teams to go to for trials at the California Motor
Speedway in late September, followed by the race across the Mojave desert
somewhere between Los Angeles and Las Vegas on October 8th. Dr James O’Neill, the CEO of Autonosys,
said: “I am incredibly proud of
this achievement. From founding the
company less than a year ago, we have advanced to the stage where we have beaten
name brand teams such as MIT to make it into the semi finals.” Dr. O’Neill, a former executive at JDS
Uniphase, the Ottawa company which dominated the market for optical telecom
components during the dot com boom, added, “I am even more proud of the fact
that this was achieved by a team consisting mainly of volunteers working
evenings and weekends on a
shoestring budget. This achievement illustrates once again that in the high tech
area, Ottawa can take its place alongside, and even in front of, the best in the
world” The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency
is the long range R&D branch of the US Military.
In the past it has been responsible for fundamental innovations such as
the Internet, the Saturn 5 rocket, and the Stealth bomber. (www.darpa.mil) The Grand Challenge is a competition sponsored
by DARPA to design a vehicle which uses onboard computers to drive a previously
unknown course for more than 150 miles on desert roads, without a driver or any
communication with the outside world, in less than 10 hours.
The first vehicle to achieve this goal will receive a prize of $2million
US. (www.grandchallenge.org) AutonoSys (www.autonosys.com)
is an Ottawa based high tech company working on Autonomous Vehicles.
Its success to date has been made possible by sponsorship from Apace,
Logic Supply Inc, Navcom Technology
Inc., Opus Solutions Inc., and Sick Inc. For more information please contact: Julie Tinson Phone: (613) 867 1819 |
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