The Ody-Era team would like to thank all those who helped us get to the semi-finals of the DARPA Urban Challenge in Victorville, California. Our $20K system did not out-perform the million-dollar vehicles out there, but for a few ordinary guys working out of a garage, the opportunity to compete against the best in the world was a truly unique experience.
We will be adding here photos and videos of our exciting trip to Victorville shortly. Till then, the contents of this website are similar to what they were before the DARPA Urban Challenge.
Welcome to the Ody-Era website!
Ody-Era is the name of a futuristic autonomous vehicle that is being developed to compete in the DARPA Urban Challenge race in 2007. This site provides an overview into all aspects of the Ody-Era project, including new and exciting technological innovations that are being incorporated to make this vehicle a truly unique piece of engineering and technology!
It is worth noting that there is one significant difference between Ody-Era and many of the other teams in this race. While some of our competition have multi-million dollar budgets, we have spent less than $20,000 on this project, excluding the cost of the vehicle. Our vision system has been built from scratch, starting right from the derivation of algorithms. We are using a single ordinary desktop computer for all vehicle control, instead of the racks of high-performance workstations that are being used by some of the other teams.
By using highly innovative techniques, such as the use of $50 web cams as vision sensors for our site visit exam and utilizing scale models interacting with toy cars driven by kids to test our algorithms, we've managed to keep costs under control. With under 4000 lines of Visual Basic code controlling all aspects of the vehicle, we are trying to keep our entire vehicle control system as simple as possible.
Behind all this innovation is a dedicated team of individuals with a tremendous amount of relevant expertise geared towards converting advanced theoretical concepts into rock-solid reliable hardware. Although none of us have ever worked on autonomous vehicles, with our experience ranging from working on critical applications for defense vehicles like the Stryker, to the design and fabrication of extreme all-terrain vehicles, coupled with software and system expertise, this highly motivated underdog team is ready for the challenge!
(Shown above are team members Ron Webster, Mahesh Chengalva, Eric Miller, Rick Bletsis, Bernie Moss and Gerry VanHorn. Not shown are team members Mac Gray and Steve Kritikos, who were absent due to farming duties and overseas travel, respectively.)
Ody-Era is now the ONLY team from the state of Indiana! All other Indiana teams have been eliminated at various stages of the DARPA Urban Challenge. While some of our competitors have multi-million dollar budgets, we are managing with minimal resources and still going strong!
But we need your help! Show your Hoosier pride by becoming one of our sponsors. We'll put your logo on our vehicle in return so you may end up recovering many times your sponsorship investment through returns on advertising alone! (Remember, this is a widely publicized race which is attracting international attention). Act soon because we've got only a limited amount of space on our autonomous vehicle and as you can see in the photograph below, advertising space is starting to go!
Click here to view the DARPA fact sheet on sponsors.
If you would like to be a sponsor, please contact us at odyera2007@yahoo.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
Watch Ody-Era on the TV evening news!
Click on the icon below to watch a four-minute news clip that was aired on two Indianapolis TV stations recently.
A visit to the Ody-Era "World-wide Headquarters"
TG Daily recently visited the team in Rick's garage. Click on the icon below for an eye-witness account of their tour of the Ody-Era "World-wide Headquarters".
Meet our sponsors ...
