June 22, 2005
Autonomous Geo Tracker Auctioned

autonomous car for sale

What do you do if your Grand Challenge team didn't make it to the qualifying round of the 2005 contest? Get a head start on 2006? Or try to recoup your investment via eBay? [pdf]

Spurrier's Hurriers [google cache of the team website] seems to have chosen the latter.

The vehicle was designed to compete in the GrandChallenge.org off road 200 mile race but was not completed in time to pass a site visit.  The vehicle is now complete and will be demonstrated at the selling site if desired.

Note that “The seller ended this listing early because the item is no longer available for sale”.

Posted by jjwiseman at June 22, 2005 01:11 AM
Comments

John,

It is an interesting datapoint because the market says that nobody is willing to put more than $ 500 to have that capability (with 227 biddders!)

The way it is sold is as an autonomous car when in fact it does only waypoint following. I think it is also interesting that they think that you need a lidar to have a fully autonomous ride. No doubt all teams this year will have one as well.

The real question is: does looking at the world like a bat tell you something about intelligence ?

Igor.
Pegasus Team
http://pegasusbridge.blogspot.com

Posted by: Igor Carron on June 22, 2005 02:02 AM

Igor: I think there were only 11 bids[1]. Also, because the auction was terminated after only 4 days I'm not sure you can infer much about what people were willing to pay.

[1] http://offer.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=4557085472

Posted by: John Wiseman on June 22, 2005 02:12 AM

John,

Agreed. Certainly, the reserve price ( I wonder what it is) has the potential to be reached if nobody wins this year's race and if there is another race announced. Lots of ifs, that uncertainty alone would want to make people sell their entries, especially if the cost for hardware is over, say $10,000 (the price range where I think it begins to hurt.) It still beats the type of offers from different outfits who would sell similar vehicles to entering teams at the cost of $30,000 to $60,000 this year.


Igor.

Posted by: Igor Carron on June 22, 2005 03:26 AM
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