"Hey, Pete, lemme give you a summary: this is tough. End of summary."

We had our first team meeting last night. We looked at the DARPA announcement to try to identify key behaviors and requirements. We also started to think about how we might create broad subsystems that would cover those requirements. In case you're curious, here are some of the things DARPA wants us to do:

• 6 hr. urban mission, 60 miles, “moving traffic.”
• Obey traffic laws and operate safely
• Narrow lanes, sharp turns, traffic-congested intersections
• Obstacles: curbstones, utility poles, hydrants, blocked streets, parked vehicles, trees, pedestrians, moving vehicles
• Speed control and speed limits
• Safe following behavior, assured clear distance
• Safe check-and-go behavior when passing a vehicle or obstacle, pulling out of a parking spot, moving through intersections
• Stay in the proper lane, even around turns and through intersections
• Be safe even when GPS cuts out
• Follow paved and unpaved roads and stay in your lane even with sparse or inaccurate waypoints
• Change lanes safely and only when appropriate: not at an intersection
• Merge with traffic after an intersection
• Pull across lanes of moving traffic to merge with moving traffic in an opposing lane
• Stop within 1 meter of the stop sign and start according to intersection precedence
• Queue and move properly in intersections: take turns
• Pull into and back out of a designated parking space
• 3-point turns for U-turning
• Dynamically replan if the route is impassable

Yeah. Not sure there's much to say about that.