We spent the early part of last night trying to duplicate the conditions of test area A, but who has 12 counter-rotating cars and a large parking lot in the middle of the night? After a few hours we think we have something that might successfully complete one lap of the course … better than about 50% of the teams. At about 11 PM, however, I smell something … burning … in the car. That’s not good. Looks like we have fried the alternator. So its SUN night at 11pm and after a frantic Internet search we find a store 40 miles away open until midnight. Half the team heads there and the other half goes to the pit area. We get to the parts store just before closing, pick up the alternator, and manage to get back and install it by 3AM. Of course we need to run next morning at 9AM … and things are still not quite right.

We are still having problems with the Doppler radar, picking up all sorts of moving targets on this tight of a course. Don Harper looks around and says “I saw something in a Star Trek movie once about thinking three dimensionally … why don’t we tilt the radar into the ground and see if the multi-path limits things the way we want." It works like a champ … thank you Don!

We meet at 6AM MON morning (sleep is optional) and start testing. After a couple of runs where the car nearly collides into my test vehicle, Yiannis yells out the car window … “I think I found something here”. After looking at the merge code comment (“// place merge code here”) its pretty clear what the issue is. I give Yiannis 15 min to finish the code, which he does and head straight for the test area.

We watch Team Lux (a real impressive German team with a sleek car with fully enclosed sensors) complete about 10 laps, but at a really slow speed. MIT similarly gets bout 10 laps but only after having the test director pull a test car from the course. I didn’t know you could do that.

Our turn. The car heads off around the course and successfully navigates the first four left turns … one full lap. We met our goal, but we did not stop there. After 16 laps and a cheering crowd we pause the bot and pull it from the course. We learn that tied the course record … using SW written that morning … after not being able to start the car at midnight the night before. The most telling thing however was when Insight Racing’s sponsor (which is Lotus) walked over to our pit after the race and said “you know I really like the way your car drives." (1996 was a good year for Subaru).

Who is this team?