Today STING had an opportunity to practice in order to evaluate the system in autonomous mode after the shipping to Victorville, CA. The allocated practice period was only 30 minutes. The areas for practice are two dirt areas, so things like lane tracking and road detection are not that easy to test:-( However, the areas are great for assessment of the overall sanity of the system.
The practice period included setup of a new Road Network Definition File (RNDF), evaluation that all sensors are delivering expected information and a test of the newly generated RNDF. After this the vehicle was requested to complete the mini course in autonomous mode with no one in the car. As expected the vehicle did well and executed without problems the mission (1.5 laps on the oval shaped course).
Finally we also tested that the vehicle can be paused and resumed from the government issued e-stop console. Again the vehicle performed as expected.
There was an offocial welcome meeting with DARPA. The schedule has shifted a bit and the idea of two separate phases at the NQE has changed. Now navigation and traffic handling has been combined into joint tests. The actual testing has bene postponed by half a day to start on Saturday morning. Friday is reserved for practice testing, safety inspection and e-stop verificiation. The race is still 3rd November.
Yesterday (Wednesday) the skyes in the Mojave desert were blue and pleasant. When we drove home the skies towards LA were also clear. Today the winds had shifted back, but were not as strong and the smoke from the forest fires were back. There is a constant sense of smoke but at least we have not seen mcuh ashes the last few couple of days. It is a bit chilly in the morning (64F) but during the day the temperature increases to a comfortable 80F. It is however very dry in the desert.
