MEDIA ADVISORY

November 6, 2006

NC State Unveils New DARPA Urban Challenge Vehicle

North Carolina State University and Insight Racing will hold an unveiling of the new vehicle its team will use to compete in the 2007 US Government Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge.

The unveiling ceremony is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Wednesday, November 15, in front of Engineering Building II on Centennial Campus.  The event is free and open to the public.

Media coverage of the event is welcomed.  The keynote speaker is Simon Cobb, director of North Carolina Operations for Lotus Engineering Inc. Dick Dell, executive director of the Advanced Vehicle Research Center (AVRC), Grayson Randall, founder of Insight Racing, and other members of the team will be available to the press.

The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge requires teams to create an autonomous vehicle that can drive on city streets, avoid obstacles, stop at intersections, maneuver traffic circles, park, pass traffic and determine the best way to accomplish a mission assigned by DARPA. Major sponsors for the NC State team are the AVRC and Lotus Engineering. The final event is scheduled for November 3, 2007.

DARPA created the Grand Challenge events to advance unmanned vehicle driving technology more rapidly, answering a congressional mandate to convert one-third of military vehicles to driverless, computer-driven mode by 2015.

— weston —

Technical contact:
Walt Sliva, (919) 931-1118, wjsliva@ncsu.edu

Media contact:
Jennifer Weston, (919) 515-3848, weston@ncsu.edu

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