alumni

Stanford Engineering Puzzle

August 2007

The Urban Challenge, to be held Nov. 3, will be a timed race of robotic cars through a simulated cityscape. With no human intervention, robotic cars will have to accomplish missions around "town," following all applicable traffic laws and avoiding collisions with the other robots on the course. The race is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) sequel to the Grand Challenge of October 2005.

Stanford, of course, won the Grand Challenge with its robotic car Stanley. The car in contention for the Urban Challenge is Junior (as in Leland Stanford Jr.). Junior is a 2006 Volkswagen Passat wagon modified with a whole lot of lasers, sensors, and computers in the trunk. Junior is also loaded with artificial intelligence software that allows it to make smart decisions about how to drive in traffic.

On Aug. 9, DARPA is scheduled to announce whether Junior will advance to a qualifying round in October. Stay tuned.

Directions for puzzle

In this puzzle, your job is to act as Junior, passing all the checkpoints in order and in as few moves as possible. Safety first: You may not hit any of the other cars, which move as you do. Accidents will result in an eight-move penalty. For fun we will post (below) the names of every 10 alumni who successfully complete the puzzle and e-mail the secret word in the subject line to staff member Marge Kastner. She'll post entry number 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, etc.

You must have Flash installed to run this puzzle, which was designed by Scott Kim of Shufflebrain and programmed by Larry Doyle of Cyberiandesign.

Congratulations to all our solvers and especially to those who came in at the right time to get their names on the Web. All entries will be entered in the "Alumni Permanent Record" and count toward honorary degrees in Puzzology next June. To check out the degree earners this year please see the Puzzology page.

"Winning" entries

Lots of "Vacation" messages this month so there's still time to get your solution in and be in the top 205.

  • 1) Michael Tung
  • 2) Michael Connors
  • 3) Kyle Bruck
  • 4) Jack Lin
  • 5) Navid Yazdani
  • 15) Melissa Hsu
  • 25) Wendy Tobagus
  • 35) Jason Wolfe
  • 45) Nicolas Vong
  • 55) Sarie Uechi
  • 65) David Havelin
  • 75) Sophia Wang Traweek
  • 85) Kevin Hunt
  • 95) Daniel Gabay
  • 105) Vonnie Lopez
  • 115) Richard Thill
  • 125) Dennis Ashendorf
  • 135) Randy Jennings
  • 145) Ted Giesing
  • 155) Brian Fouts
  • 165) Michelle Pualuan
  • 175) Wade Powell
  • 185) Jen Cowman
  • 195) Avis Austin
  • 205) Don Wise

Do you want to try your hand at past puzzles? Go to our Archive page.