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Talk:DARPA Grand Challenge

Criticisms
I'm sorry, I hope I'm not breaking any guidelines, but I was just wondering if shouldn't there be a 'Criticisms' section about the claims that DARPA is a sort of cover for military advancement. I don't know much about the subject (I didn't even know what DARPA was), but i was linked from a page that discussed this kinds of how do you say, cover-ups?. Page is, as of 01-22-08, http://barrapunto.com/articles/08/01/22/1053245.shtml, it's in Spanish. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.255.77.41 (talk) 00:34, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

 * DARPA is not "a sort of cover" for military advancement: that is their explicitly stated purpose. The lead paragraph adequately addresses the purpose of the Urban challenge (whether that was the case in 2008, I do not know). Feyrauth (talk) 17:07, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Course length
How long is the course? Our article contradicts itself: 150 vs. 210 miles. Also, it's not clear to me whether the vechicles use regular roads, dirt roads, or drive cross country. AxelBoldt 16:18, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't know where the 210 mile number keeps coming from. Looking at a map the distance of 150 miles is much more likely (the course this year ran from just outside Barstow, California to just past the Nevada border).  The number 210 would be more accurate if the race started in Los Angeles, but it didn't.  However, the DARPA rules specify that it can be any distance under 300 miles (so, next year's course may be somewhere else entirely).  And the vehicles travel cross-country: no roads.  However, it's never been clear to me what they do when they have to cross roads - although it's a moot point since I don't think any vehicles got far enough to any cross highways.

 * Anyways, let me see what I can do about the article. RadicalBender 17:24, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * For the 2005 race, DARPA has said the course will be at most 175 miles. As for roads, because of environmental restrictions outside of their control (the desert tortoise for example), all or most of the course is over dirt roads.  The course can and most likely will cross active roads.  In last year's competition, one team was paused to allow a truck to cross the road.  The only external control allowed (actually, its required) is a 3-way control, RUN, PAUSE, and STOP.  If the vehicle is paused, the timer stops running for that team until they start running again.  --Escher0 12:08, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure, but I'm fairly certain that the distance was between 125 and 175 miles. Zephyr817 04:28, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Post Race Hype (+ Unholy Alliance of Wired Magazine & Stanford AI Lab)
Should the article mention the hype surrounding the DARPA Grand Challenge, in particular the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge? For example, how much of a challenge was it really? The course was precisely layed out by thousands of waypoints; no sophisticated planning procedure was necessary. Four separate teams managed to finish the course in time, which suggests that the task was not that hard. In fact, several days before the race the German leader of the Stanford team announced that this time with very high probability there would be a winner, in line with the evaluations of other experts. But after Stanford's Volkswagen won due to a technical glitch of CMU's vehicle he tried to fuel the hype by claiming, rather inconsistently: "The impossible has been achieved!" According to a rather biased Wired magazine article he then compared himself to Charles Lindbergh, like a chicken claiming "I'm an eagle." Confetti parade, anybody? :-)

One of the organizers (Tether - also ex-Stanford) even compared the race to the first flight of the Wright brothers. The Wired article, however, later claimed that another German (Dickmanns) played the role of the Wright Brothers of this field in 1986.

Soon after the race the Stanford AI lab home page also claimed: "Dec 29, 2005: Stanford built three of the top ten robots ever! According to a recent evaluation by Wired Magazine, three of Stanford's robots were among the top ten robots ever: Stanley (Number 1), Shakey (Number 5), and the Stanford Cart (Number 10). Wired Magazine polled numerous experts to determine the 50 Best Robots Ever. Check it out!" Unfortunately Wired magazine is known as a megaphone of Stanford with headquarters in San Francisco - few if any unbiased roboticists outside of California would agree with that list. What kind of "experts" did they poll? Maybe cartoonists, since Number 2 is a fictional Japanese comic strip robot. The other cars that finished shortly after Stanley are not even mentioned... Actually I don't think any mere car would rank near the top 5 of a serious robot list, which would be dominated by Japanese robots - real ones, not fictional ones - since Japan dominates research in this field and has 40 percent of the world's robots, including many of the most sophisticated and famous ones.

Anyway, since the hype was a significant part of the event it seems worth mentioning, even if it was totally overblown. User Ravedave is right though: it must be done in a way that does not leave any room for POV. De-Hyping Stan 16:39, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I absolutely agree. Read the technical papers in "Journal of Field Robotics" and you will be underwhelmed: a gazillion waypoints, very primitive speed control. LOTS of hype, little progress. Samfreed 10:56, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

1995 S-Class Robot Car of Dickmanns
I wrote the first draft of an article about Ernst Dickmanns and his fast vision-guided autonomous Mercedes robots of the past 25 years. ERDI 20:34, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Links
I think that this page has too many links! Nate |  Talk Esperanza! 02:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Urban Challenge
I found this page by looking for info on the defunct race, the Urban Challenge. I was hoping there would be info on other scavenger hunt races. Should this be referenced? Gglockner 06:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

as the DARPA Urban Challenge heats up (site visits in this summer (2007), competition in Nov) perhaps it might be a good idea to give the new competition it's own page Vectra14 06:29, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

The sponsor list needs to be reformatted, as it looks like Stanford is teaming with (all of) "Volkswagen, Oshkosh, Honeywell, Raytheon, Caltech, Autonomous Solutions, Virginia Tech, Cornell, and MIT". The actual announcement naming the teams specifies it as simply "Stanford University", without mentioning VW by name. Similarly, CMU is listed without the GM link. Nchoe123 08:16, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The article says: "The Urban Challenge requires designers to build vehicles able to obey all traffic laws while they detect and avoid other robots on the course. This is a particular challenge for vehicle software, as vehicles must make "intelligent" decisions in real time based on the actions of other vehicles." Shouldn't it be mentioned that the 2007 Urban Grand Challenge is trying to repeat something the VaMP robot car was already able to do 12 years ago? And the VaMP was even faster, although computers were much slower. It seems the field has become a bit stagnant in the past decade. Willingandable 10:55, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I inserted: It is interesting to compare the 1995 VaMP robot car of  Mercedes-Benz and Ernst Dickmanns to the five cars that finished the course of  the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge: Stanley & Sandstorm & H1ghlander & TerraMax & Kat-5. In 2005, the DARPA cars drove 212 km without human intervention. In 1995, the VaMP drove up to 158 km without human intervention. The DARPA cars drove on a dirt road flattened by a steamroller. The VaMP drove on the Autobahn. In both cases the road boundaries were easily identifiable by computer vision. Like many commercial cars, the DARPA cars used GPS navigation, essentially driving from one waypoint to the next (almost 3000 waypoints for the entire course, several waypoints per curve). Like humans, the VaMP drove by vision only. The DARPA cars reached speeds up to 40 km/h. The VaMP reached speeds up to 180 km/h. So the VaMP was more than four times faster although its computer processors apparently were 1000 times slower. The DARPA cars did not encounter any traffic but a few stationary obstacles. The VaMP drove in traffic around moving obstacles, passing other cars. Willingandable 04:25, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

 * I edited this section (the one mentioned above) on all the pages of the vehicles you mentioned with the same version I edited into this article. Hopefully, this brings about a NPOV. I also made sure that as many comparisons as was possible (information on the VaMP is sparse) were cited. Kivaan 21:36, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the improvements! I inserted that Stanley passed H1ghlander "when H1ghlander was standing still". Willingandable 14:44, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

The long shadow of Ernst Dickmanns
Some claim the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge was a step forward, since the US teams in the earlier 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge failed. Picking the 2004 race as a straw man for a good bashing! But of course the real reference point is what Ernst Dickmanns achieved ten years earlier. In 1995 his car autonomously drove up to 158 km, nearly the same distance as the traffic-free 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, but much faster, and in traffic. Without GPS, using only computer vision, which apparently was much more sophisticated than the vision used in the GPS-based DARPA races. I cannot see any significant technological innovations or progress here. And even the upcoming 2007 Urban Grand Challenge looks rather tame when compared to what Dickmanns did. Truecobb 21:18, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Separate 2005 page (obsolete) discussion
I have untied the 3 articles, about 2004, 20056, and the Grand Challenge in General. Here is the "Talk Page" from 2005. Samfreed 09:20, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Correcting the Times
"The Stanford Racing Team was the first to cross the finish line, with a time of 7 hours and 54 minutes. Red Team Too finished soon after with a time of 7 hours and 59 minutes. The third team to cross the finish line was Read Team, with a surprise upset at a time of 7 hours 52 minutes. It is important to note, however, that due to the staggered start, the order in which they crossed the finish line is not indicative of their place. Note: These results are not official."

Where are these results from? If they're directly from the Grand Challenge.com flash interface, they're incorrect, as the the time hasn't been stopped, and is continuing to run.

 * I was taking the times from the flash interface, and you are right, they are wrong. I'm changing to times to match a news article (http://www.gizmag.com/go/4720/). --mdd4696 21:29, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Local Patriotism
This site and others link to a rather one-sided Wired magazine article on the DARPA race winner Stanley %28vehicle%29, and in the Stanford AI lab home page I found this announcement of another one: "Dec 29, 2005: Stanford built three of the top ten robots ever! According to a recent evaluation by Wired Magazine, three of Stanford's robots were among the top ten robots ever: Stanley (Number 1), Shakey (Number 5), and the Stanford Cart (Number 10). Wired Magazine polled numerous experts to determine the 50 Best Robots Ever. Check it out!"

The problem is, of course, that Wired magazine is based in San Francisco and has strong ties to Stanford. Local patriotism may be fun, but few if any unbiased roboticists would agree with that list.

So what kind of "experts" did they poll? Maybe cartoonists, since Number 2 is a fictional Japanese comic strip robot. The other cars that finished shortly after Stanley are not even mentioned...

Presumably the list is not meant to be taken seriously. Any serious list would be dominated by real Japanese robots (and would not even mention fictional ones), since Japan clearly dominates robotics research and has 40 percent of the world's robots, including many of the most expensive and sophisticated and famous ones. I don't think any mere car would rank among the top 5. But don't expect Wired magazine to publish such a list!

Nevertheless, Wikipedia articles such as this one might want to link to a bit more objective sources. De-Hyping Stan 16:54, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Agree, though bias can be hard to spot. I would agree with the fact that Stanly is a top ten robot (though I think the Mars rovers beat it) - Ravedave 18:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, even if we accept the (in my opinion questionable) premise that Stanley should be in the top 10 list, shouldn't the vehicles of, say, CMU appear there, too? One of them led the race and apparently just lost due to a technical glitch, finishing just a few minutes after Stanley. I guess Wired magazine would have included them if CMU was a local Californian university... De-Hyping Stan 21:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Shakey wasn't even built at Stanford; Shakey was built at SRI International, a think tank near Stanford. I saw that Wired list; it was weak on Japanese research robots. Still, I was quite impressed with the Stanford grand challenge entry, which represented a significant breakthrough in computer vision.  The CMU effort was basically an attempt to throw money at the problem, and wasn't really that innovative.    --John Nagle 06:25, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

 * CMU had expected a much tougher race than what was presented, and this caused them to overbuild their software compared to Stanford's. As you might expect, this meant their software ran slower, and was one of the factors that led them to defeat (Intel was a contributor to both teams and wrote an article about this). Both cars were very well engineered, and I wouldn't claim that one was much better than the other. 67.186.29.171 23:07, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Chicken and Eagle
How much of a challenge was it anyway? The course was precisely layed out by numerous waypoints. No sophisticated planning procedure was necessary. Four separate teams managed to finish the course in time. This seems to suggest that the task was not that hard.

In fact, several days before the race the Stanley team leader announced that this time with very high probability there would be a winner, thus reflecting the general feelings of all the experts. Afterwards, however, he fueled the hype by claiming, rather inconsistently: "the impossible has been achieved!" Then he compared himself to Charles Lindbergh (no joke!), according to the Wired magazine article, which also says the "Wright Brothers / Kitty Hawk spot" belongs to Ernst Dickmanns (1986). Lindbergh! Like the chicken claiming "I'm an eagle!" One of the most ridiculous comparisons I've seen lately. Now waiting for the confetti parade :-) De-Hyping Stan 19:15, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Just to clear some things up, first, all 4 teams that completed the race used relatively sophisticated obstacle detecting sensors and path planning software. Although the waypoints were given, the path contained obstacles and cliffs.  Second, the Stanley team leader's announced belief that there would be a winner reflected his insider opinion.  His statement that "the impossible has been achieved" refers to how hard a problem this was to solve, stumping researchers for a decade.  The statements only contradict when taken out of context.

 * What do you mean by "stumping researchers for a decade?" A decade before the DARPA race Ernst Dickmanns already had much more impressive autonomous cars, going much faster, and in traffic. Where exactly was the progress here? Truecobb 20:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

 * Dickmanns' achievement was impressive. Note, though, that during 1758 km of (almost) autonomous driving on Dickmanns' Autobahn run, 185 times a human had to intervene and take over. Driving with a human ready to take over is not quite the same as driving without intervention over an entire preset substantial course. -R. S. Shaw 00:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

 * Sure, but note that on highways with little traffic it went up to 40 miles autonomously, no GPS guidance, four times faster than the five (!) successful DARPA race cars, which didn't have to face any traffic... and this was 10 years ago when computers were slow. Does not look like a lot of progress to me. Truecobb 20:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

 * I have to correct my previous statements - according to the article on Ernst Dickmanns his 1995 car autonomously drove up to 158 km. Nearly the same distance as the 2005 "Grand Challenge", but much faster, and in traffic. Truecobb 20:18, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Mention Foreign Contributions?
The original DARPA web site was headed by the slogan "Harnessing American Ingenuity." But perhaps the Wikipedia article should also mention some of the foreign contributions? For example, the University of Parma (Italy) contributed to one of the cars that finished the course. And the winner was a German car with a German team leader. (Who promptly compared himself to Lindbergh - see section chicken and eagle above.) De-Hyping Stan 19:15, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

1995 S-Class Robot Car of Dickmanns
More than ten years ago a fast vision-guided autonomous Mercedes robot programmed by the team of Ernst Dickmanns (the pioneer of robot cars) already performed pretty amazing feats - the Grand Challenge doesn't look so impressive in comparison. I was surprised that I could not find a decent Wikipedia article about Dickmanns, and wrote a first draft. ERDI 20:53, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

VaMP (1995) vs Stanley & Sandstorm & H1ghlander & TerraMax & Kat-5 (2005)
Five cars finished the course of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge: Stanley & Sandstorm & H1ghlander & TerraMax & Kat-5. It is interesting to compare them to the earlier VaMP robot car of Mercedes-Benz and Ernst Dickmanns. My sources are mostly Wikipedia and the rest of the web. In 2005, the DARPA cars drove 212 km without human intervention. In 1995, the VaMP drove up to 158 km without human intervention. The DARPA cars drove on a dirt road flattened by a steamroller. The VaMP drove on the Autobahn. In both cases the road boundaries were easily identifiable by computer vision. Like many commercial cars, the DARPA cars used GPS navigation, essentially driving from one waypoint to the next (almost 3000 waypoints for the entire course, several waypoints per curve). Like humans, the VaMP drove by vision only. The DARPA cars reached speeds up to 40 km/h. The VaMP reached speeds up to 180 km/h. So the VaMP was more than four times faster although its computer processors apparently were 1000 times slower. The DARPA cars did not encounter any traffic but a few stationary obstacles. The VaMP drove in traffic around moving obstacles, passing other cars. Interestingly, the 2007 Urban Grand Challenge is trying to repeat something the VaMP was already able to do 12 years ago. Willingandable 03:38, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

The VaMP team 12 years ago solved a very different problem than the Grand Challenge 2005 did, and a similar but much easier one than the GC 2007 does. Their achievements are applaudable but the above snippet leaves out a few details:

- VaMP drove exclusively on highways, so no tight curves, intersections, precedence rules, parking etc as in urban traffic

- Much more structured environment, everything is engineered to be observable and all that is required to drive successfully is to stay between two white lines and keep the same distance to the car in front of you.

- GPS is not necessary because the car only goes straight (and slightly left/right if the highway has curves). Highway on/offramps and interesections were handled manually.

- The 158km autonomous-stretch was the best of thousands of driving stretches, not of just one as in the GC. The mean time between human interventions was just 9km. Furthermore, it was in self-selected terrain. Denmark to be exact, where there is a general speed limit of 110km/h and hence everyone goes at the same speed and overtaking is not necessary.

RobotsRock 20:26, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I edited the latest version to achieve a less repetitive and more structured section: Five cars finished the course of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge: Stanley, Sandstorm, H1ghlander, TerraMax, and Kat-5. It is interesting to compare them to the earlier VaMP robot car of Mercedes-Benz and Ernst Dickmanns. The VaMP was built in the 1990's as a continuation of Dickmanns' earlier work at the Universität der Bundeswehr München in Munich; the project was funded in part by the $1 billion dollar EUREKA Prometheus Project. The VaMP was able to drive in traffic among moving obstacles, automatically passing slower vehicles; the DARPA cars were not (H1ghlander was standing still when Stanley passed it in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge). The VaMP reached speeds up to 180 km/h (111 mph); the DARPA cars were limited to top speeds of 80 km/h (50 mph). In 1995, the VaMP drove up to 158 km without human intervention on a Danish highway where most drivers adhere to the 110km/h general speed limit and passing is rarely necessary; decisions made by the VaMP were checked for validity by a human safety pilot (the 158km represent the longest stretch of thousands of km of test runs, and the terrain was self-selected by the VaMP team). In 2005, the DARPA cars drove 212 km (132 miles) without human intervention on the Grand Challenge course selected by the race organizers. VaMP drove on the mostly straight Autobahn ; the DARPA cars drove on a variety of graded dirt roads, including narrow and steep mountain passes. The VaMP drove mostly by vision with some input provided by radar but without GPS navigation;  the DARPA cars heavily used  GPS, always driving from one waypoint to the next (the DARPA course was unrehearsed by the teams but precisely given by almost 3000 waypoints, with several waypoints per curve). The DARPA cars combined other sensor data such as LIDAR, video cameras, and inertial guidance systems for better navigation in between waypoints, where road boundary identification was harder than on the Autobahn because of the unstructured terrain (Autobahn road boundaries are engineered to be easily visually observable). The top speed of the VaMP's computer processors was 1000 times slower per dollar than those used in the DARPA vehicles. Onetofive 15:33, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Carnegie-Mellon cheated?
I was told by someone familiar with the competition that Carnegie Melon cheated because of the pressure on their team. Something about hiring a helicopter to overfly the course, or something. I don't know the details, so I'm just asking if anyone else had heard of these rumours. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.105.104.95 (talk • contribs).

Just watching the NOVA program I have to say CMU certainly cheated by having their army of laptop monkeys feverishly preprogramming the entire route upon receiving the waypoints.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.135.142.144 (talk • contribs) 18:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

 * That wasn't cheating; it was well within the rules, which explicitly allowed 2 hours for such planning to take place. A dozen humans planning is not exactly an army, either, but does show resources being available to throw at the problem. Of course such an approach is hardly elegant; Stanford's system has clean lines in comparison. -R. S. Shaw 21:52, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

My two cents
Having driven around both on German Autobahns and on (few) sand tracks -though I do not know what the tracks for the 2005 challenge were like - I can say that at least for me as a human, Autobahns provide much less of a challenge concentration-wise. In fact, falling asleep at the wheel generally seems to be big enough a problem that it is reflected in certain design features, like avoidance of straight sections and "humming" road markings. I would also imagine that the road/lane limits (on the Autobahn it's staying on your lane that matters) are much clearer on the Autobahn, but this would have to be verified, for exapmle by driving in the moonshine with lights off. Generally I would think that a German Autobahn offers few obstacles that are smaller than a motorbike but big enough to damage/overturn your car. Last not least, trying to drive at speeds of 180 km/h on a desert track just doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Yaan 18:28, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Update info on Urban Challenge
The info in this article is quite outdated. There will only be 11 cars racing. http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34665/113/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.201.23.127 (talk) 20:45, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't call it "quite outdated" for a story that is only a few hours old. It does appear that you are correct, though, and that only 11 teams will be competing. http://www.gizmag.com/go/8277/gallery/ http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/ Cardsplayer4life 21:27, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and added the info to the article. Cardsplayer4life 21:38, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Individual Article Creation for different events? (2004, 2005, 2007, etc.)
Should there be individual articles for each event? This one is getting lengthy, and as the results from the 2007 event roll in over the next few days, I expect it will only grow more. A brief summary on this article, with links to the individual articles for each event might make sense at this juncture. Anyone else have any thoughts? Cardsplayer4life 01:51, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Nothing wrong with a long article, though some editing may be in order (details of history can be dropped). In any case, anyone interested in one year would be interested in the others. We used to have 3 articles, main, 2004, and 2005, but then they were merged, rightly IMHO. Samfreed 09:18, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, it looks like someone went ahead and created separate articles and linked to them like I was suggesting. Cardsplayer4life 00:58, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Next DARPA Grand Challenge ?
I fail to find any official (or even unofficial) statement about wether or not there will be other DARPA Grand challenges. While it seems that all technical milestones were achieved, the competition could now be about average speed and endurance. Does anyone have informations on this ? --Iv (talk) 17:14, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * There are many possible more or less obvious next challenges such as passive sensor only driving but it is possible that the light shined on the fact that it's a competition to further warfare by me and perhaps others has dampened their spirit somewhat. They used to have an image of a camo humvee in a desert city area on their site but removed it after I firmly pointed out what the real purpose of the competition was on their forum. Not only are they depraved enough to develop weapons to kill but curiously enough didn't like to be reminded of the purpose of their work. My comments were deleted because the truth is not welcome when you are doing evil. I suspect that's at least partially the cause but perhaps also coupled with an error in judgment that it's good enough as is and can't be much better. As long as there are republicans and soldiers in this world it's probably best that we don't have AI killing machines. (not that anything in the competition was worthy of the term AI, fortunately) -Dan Frederiksen 85.83.19.103 (talk) 09:52, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I honestly doubt that anyone participating on the DARPA challenge had any doubt about why the DARPA was funding this competition. --Iv (talk) 14:30, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Removed garbled sentence
Hi there, I removed this sentence: Although the 2004 course required more elevation gain and some very sharp switchbacks (Daggett Ridge) were required near the beginning of the route, the course had far fewer curves and generally wider roads than the 2004 course.

This is obviously meaningless. If you work on this page, and know what it is supposed to say, it would be great if it could be corrected and re-inserted, as I think it could be a useful comparison. C.anguschandler (talk) 18:08, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedians should solve DARPA "balloon hunt" and donate proceeds to Wikipedia
I've been thinking about the new DARPA challenge (http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/) and it seems to me Wikipedia/Wikipedians are uniquely positioned to solve this challenge. I am not a big wikipedia contributor, but would certainly be happy to share any knowledge I get about the balloons to support Wikipedia. Anyone else interested? Has this already been proposed? Let me know if there is a more appropriate page to make this suggestion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Velosa (talk • contribs) 02:07, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Comparisons to VaMP section
I am being bold and deleting the "Comparisons to VaMP" section: the article is on the DARPA Grand Challenge, not VaMP. The "History and Background" section mentions VaMP (amongst other similar projects) and provides a link; readers can draw their own comparison. Not to mention that it's very hard to read in its current form. Feyrauth (talk) 17:23, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

DARPA Robotics Challenge
The inclusion of information about the third challenge in the opening paragraph seems odd for a general DARPA GC article without also mentioning the upcoming Robotics Challenge, which seems to be part of a logical progression. I have made some edits to tweak the reference to the third challenge (less detail, which is repeated in the subsection on the Urban Challenge) and to add the Robotics Challenge which Disco1stu added to the article last month.LUxlii (talk) 19:57, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Technology, Section 6, the one with the List of OS and Language(s) used for the 2007 Urban Challenge...
... has no mention of what Stanford Racing (& Volkswagon) used for a computer language or OS. I thought it would be of interest since they came in 2nd.129.170.31.110 (talk) 14:57, 2 July 2013 (UTC)Brett Tofel

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Suggest to remove first image because of inaccuracy
The image at the top of this article, titled "DesertToCity.jpg" claims to be in the Mojave Desert at the site of the Grand Challenge, facing Downtown Los Angeles. Although it is a cool image, I don't think it is accurate, and I think it should be removed from this page. I'm wondering if it is photoshopped.

Reason 1: Looking at the orientation of the Downtown LA buildings in the background anyone can immediately notice with some simple research it is showing a view of Downtown from the northwest. Mojave desert is to the northeast of Downtown LA, not the northwest, which would mean a much different order of the high rise buildings (U.S. Bank building, PWC building, etc.). If you are curious, glance at images from Griffith Observatory which show DTLA. Unless there was some leg of the DARPA Challenge that happened in the Hollywood hills where this picture was taken that I don't know about, this should be enough convincing reason alone.

Reason 2: Mojave Desert is at an elevation of 4,000 feet MSL (mean sea level), Downtown LA is at about 300 feet elevation MSL, and in between the two is a large mountain range which includes Mt Baldy, which is about 10,000 ft. Given I don't know the exact coordinates of the desert location where the picture was taken, it could have been anywhere somewhat along the I-15 highway route from Barstow to the California-Nevada border in Primm, and we can't assume the straight line distance intersects Mt Baldy perfectly. But a straight line distance to DTLA would likely cross the mountain range at about a elevation of 8,000 ft at the highest point. Therefore, I don't see how you could position a camera to get DTLA to line up perfectly behind the car like this picture shows, without the mountain range several thousand feet higher blocking it. The only possibility I can think of would be if the picture was taken in the Mountain Pass area further to the northeast nearby Primm, but seems very unlikely.

Reason 3: Reason 3 is air quality visual distance. The competition's route ranges from about 90 miles away from DLTA (at Barstow) to about 190 miles away from DTLA (at Primm, NV) as the bird flies. Air quality in southern CA does not usually warrant long-distance visibility this clear so this also makes this seem unlikely.

Reason 4: Kind of tags on to reason 2, but notice how there is very conveniently a dust cloud on the horizon right in the transition area between the desert scape and the crystal clear city buildings. I am guessing this was added in photoshop to ward off any scrutiny into how these 2 different sceneries connected.

2022 Triage Challenge
I added this challenge for medical triage a few months ago, only to realize now the theme of this page is about the Grand Challenge, although this article does include other robotic vehicle challenges not part of the Grand Challenge. If there is no objection, I will remove the Triage Challenge from this article and find an appropriate article to repost it (or do a separate article). Thank you. Path2space (talk) 20:55, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

 * I just removed the section on the Triage Challenge and have added it to the article DARPA Prize Competitions. Thank you. Path2space (talk) 03:33, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:DARPA Grand Challenge


text:
Infrared Space Observatory

The Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) was a space telescope for infrared light designed and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), in cooperation with ISAS (now part of JAXA) and NASA. The ISO was designed to study infrared light at wavelengths of 2.5 to 240 micrometres and operated from 1995 to 1998.

The €480.1-million satellite was launched on 17 November 1995 from the ELA-2 launch pad at the Guiana Space Centre near Kourou in French Guiana. The launch vehicle, an Ariane 44P rocket, placed ISO successfully into a highly elliptical geocentric orbit, completing one revolution around the Earth every 24 hours. The primary mirror of its Ritchey-Chrétien telescope measured 60 cm in diameter and was cooled to 1.7 kelvins by means of superfluid helium. The ISO satellite contained four instruments that allowed for imaging and photometry from 2.5 to 240 micrometres and spectroscopy from 2.5 to 196.8 micrometers.

ESA and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center made efforts to improve the data pipelines and specialized software analysis tools to yield the best quality calibration and data reduction methods from the mission. IPAC supports ISO observers and data archive users through in-house visits and workshops.

History and development
In 1983, the US-Dutch-British IRAS inaugurated space-based infrared astronomy by performing the first-ever 'all-sky survey' at infrared wavelengths. The resulting map of the infrared sky pinpointed some 350,000 infrared sources waiting to be explored by IRAS' successors. In 1979, IRAS was in an advanced stage of planning and the expected results from IRAS led to the first proposal for ISO made to ESA in the same year. With the rapid improvements in infrared detector-technology, ISO was to provide detailed observations for some 30,000 infrared sources with much improved sensitivity and resolution. ISO was to perform 1000 times better in sensitivity and 100 times better in angular resolution at 12 micrometres compared to IRAS.

A number of follow-up studies resulted in the selection of ISO as the next installment for the ESA Scientific Programme in 1983. Next came a Call for Experiment and Mission Scientist Proposals to the scientific community, resulting in the selection of the scientific instruments in 1985. The four instruments chosen were developed by teams of researchers from France, Germany, the Netherlands and United Kingdom.

Design and development of the satellite started in 1986 with Aérospatiale's space division (currently absorbed into Thales Alenia Space) leading an international consortium of 32 companies responsible for manufacture, integration and testing of the new satellite. Final assembly took place at the Cannes Mandelieu Space Center.

The satellite
The basic design of ISO was strongly influenced by that of its immediate predecessor. Like IRAS, ISO was composed of two major components:
 * Payload module, composed of a large cryostat holding the telescope and the four scientific instruments.
 * Service module, supports the activities of the payload module by providing electrical power, thermal control, attitude and orbit control and telecommunications.

The payload module also held a conical sun shade, to prevent stray light from reaching the telescope, and two large star trackers. The latter were part of the Attitude and Orbit Control Subsystem (AOCS) which provided three-axis stabilisation of ISO with a pointing accuracy of one arc second. It consisted of Sun and Earth sensors, the before-mentioned star trackers, a quadrant star sensor on the telescope axis, gyroscopes and reaction wheels. A complementary reaction control system (RCS), using hydrazine propellant, was responsible for orbital direction and finetuning shortly after launch. The complete satellite weighed just under 2500 kg, was 5.3 m high, 3.6 m wide and measured 2.3 m in depth.

The service module held all the warm electronics, the hydrazine propellant tank and provided up to 600 watts of electrical power by means of solar cells mounted on the sunpointing side of the service module-mounted sunshield. The underside of the service module sported a load-bearing, ring shaped, physical interface for the launch vehicle.

The cryostat of the payload module surrounded the telescope and science instrument with a large dewar containing a toroidal tank loaded with 2268 litres of superfluid helium. Cooling by slow evaporation of the helium kept the temperature of the telescope below 3.4 K and the science instruments below 1.9 K. These very low temperatures were required for the scientific instruments to be sensitive enough to detect the small amount of infrared radiation from cosmic sources. Without this extreme cooling, the telescope and instruments would see only their own intense infrared emissions rather than the faint ones from afar.

Optical telescope
The ISO telescope was mounted on the center line of the dewar, near the bottom-side of the toroidal helium tank. It was of the Ritchey-Chrétien type with an effective entrance pupil of 60 cm, a focal length ratio of 15 and a resulting focal length of 900 cm. Very strict control over straylight, particularly that from bright infrared sources outside the telescope's field of view, was necessary to ensure the guaranteed sensitivity of the scientific instruments. A combination of light-tight shields, baffles inside the telescope and the sunshade on top of the cryostat accomplished full protection against straylight. Furthermore, ISO was constrained from observing too close to the Sun, Earth and Moon; all major sources of infrared radiation. ISO always pointed between 60 and 120 degrees away from the Sun and it never pointed closer than 77 degrees to Earth, 24 degrees to the Moon or closer than 7 degrees to Jupiter. These restrictions meant that at any given time only about 15 percent of the sky was available to ISO.

A pyramid-shaped mirror behind the primary mirror of the telescope distributed the infrared light to the four instruments, providing each of them with a 3 arc-minute section of the 20 arc-minute field of view of the telescope. Thus, pointing of a different instrument to the same cosmic object meant repointing the entire ISO satellite.

Instruments
ISO carried an array of four scientific instruments for observations in the infrared:
 * Infrared Camera (ISOCAM) – A high-resolution camera covering 2.5 to 17 micrometre wavelength with two different detectors. Like a visible-light camera it takes pictures of astronomical objects, but the image shows what the object looks like in infrared light.
 * Photo-polarimeter (ISOPHOT) – An instrument designed to measure the polarisation of infrared radiation emitted from an astronomical object. The very broad wavelength range from 2.4 to 240 micrometre allowed this instrument to see the infrared emissions of even the coldest astronomical objects such as interstellar dust clouds
 * Short Wave Spectrometer (SWS) – A spectrometer covering the 2.4 to 45 micrometre wavelength. Observations with this instrument provided valuable information about the chemical composition, density and temperature of the universe.
 * Long Wave Spectrometer (LWS) – A spectrometer covering the 45 to 196.8 micrometre wavelength.

All four instruments were mounted directly behind the primary mirror of the telescope, in a circular arrangement, with each instrument taking up an 80 degree segment of the cylindrical space. The field of view for each instrument was offset to the central axis of the telescope's field of view. This means that every instrument 'saw' a different portion of the sky at a given moment. In standard operational mode one instrument was in primary operation.

Launch and operations
After a very successful development and integration phase ISO was finally launched into orbit on 17 November 1995, on board an Ariane-44P launch vehicle. Performance of the launch vehicle was very good with the apogee only 43 km lower than expected. ESA's Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt in Germany had full control over ISO in the first four days of flight. After early commissioning primary control over ISO was handed over to the Spacecraft Control Centre (SCC) at Villanueva de la Cañada in Spain (VILSPA) for the remainder of the mission. In the first three weeks after launch the orbit was fine-tuned and all satellite systems were activated and tested. Cool-down of the cryostat proved to be more efficient than previously calculated, so the anticipated mission length was extended to 24 months. Between 21 and 26 November all four science instruments were switched on and thoroughly checked out. Between 9 December 1995 and 3 February 1996 the 'Performance Verification Phase' took place, dedicated to commissioning all instruments and fixing problems. Routine observations started from 4 February 1996, and lasted until the last helium coolant depleted on 8 April 1998.

The perigee of ISO's orbit lay well inside the Van Allen radiation belt, forcing the science instruments to be shut down for seven hours during each pass through the radiation belt. Thus, 17 hours in each orbit remained for scientific observation. A typical 24-hour orbit of ISO can be broken down into six phases:
 * Acquisition-of-Signal (AOS) by the primary Mission Control Center VILSPA in Spain and activation of the satellite.
 * Science operations during the VILSPA window, starting four hours after perigee, and lasting for up to nine hours.
 * Handover of operations to the secondary mission control center at Goldstone at apogee. During this 15 minute periode the science instruments could not be operated.
 * Science operations during the Goldstone window, lasting up to eight hours.
 * De-activation of the instruments upon approach of the Van Allen radiation belt and Loss-of-Signal (LOS) at Goldstone.
 * Perigee passage.

Contrary to IRAS, no science data was recorded on-board ISO for later transmission to the ground. All data, both science data and housekeeping data were transmitted to the ground in real-time. The perigee point of ISO's orbit was below the radio horizon of the mission control centers at both VILSPA and Goldstone, thus forcing the science instruments to be switched off at perigee.

End of mission
At 07:00 UTC on 8 April 1998 flight controllers at VILSPA noticed a rise in temperature of the telescope. This was a clear sign that the load of superfluid helium coolant had depleted. At 23:07 UTC the same day, the temperature of the science instruments had risen above 4.2 K and science observations were ceased. A few detectors in the SWS instrument were capable of making observations at higher temperatures and remained in use for another 150 hours to make detailed measurements of an additional 300 stars. In the month following depletion of coolant the 'Technology Test Phase' (TTP) was initiated to test several elements of the satellite in off-nominal conditions. After completion of TTP, the perigee of ISO's orbit was lowered sufficiently enough to ensure ISO will burn up in Earth's atmosphere in 20 to 30 years after shutdown. ISO was then permanently switched off on 16 May 1998 at 12:00 UTC.

Results
On average, ISO performed 45 observations in each 24-hour orbit. Throughout its lifetime of over 900 orbits ISO performed more than 26,000 successful scientific observations. The huge amounts of scientific data generated by ISO was subject to extensive archiving activities up to 2006. The full data-set has been available to the scientific community since 1998 and many discoveries have been made, with probably many more still to come:
 * ISO detected the presence of water vapour in starforming regions, in the vicinity of stars at the end of their lives, in sources very close to the Galactic Centre, in the atmospheres of planets in the Solar System and in the Orion Nebula.
 * Planet formation was detected around old, dying stars. This discovery contradicted theories that planet formation was only possible around young stars.
 * Hydrogen fluoride gas was for the first time detected in interstellar gas clouds.
 * The first detection of the earliest stages of stellar formation. The pre-stellar core L1689B was found and studied in great detail with ISO's LWS instrument.
 * ISO discovered large amounts of cosmic dust in the previously thought empty space between galaxies.
 * Observations of the most-luminous object in the universe, Arp 220, revealed that the source for its enormous emission of infrared radiation is an outburst of star formation.
 * Observations with the LWS instrument confirmed the previous discovery by IRAS of large cloud-like structures of very cold hydrocarbons radiating primarily in the infrared. These infrared cirrus clouds affect the energy balance of the entire universe, acting as a kind of galactic refrigerator.
 * ISO searched for, and found several protoplanetary disks: rings or disks of material around stars which are considered to be the first stage of planet formation.
 * ISO pointed its sensitive instruments on several of the planets in the Solar System to determine the chemical composition of their atmospheres.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Infrared Space Observatory


text:
1000 Blank White Cards

1000 Blank White Cards is a party game played with cards in which the deck is created as part of the game. Though it has been played by adults in organized groups worldwide, 1000 Blank White Cards is also described as well-suited for children in Hoyle's Rules of Games. Since any game rules are contained on the cards (rather than existing as all-encompassing rules or in a rule book), 1000 Blank White Cards can be considered a sort of nomic. It can be played by any number of players and provides the opportunity for card creation and gameplay outside the scope of a single sitting. Creating new cards during the game, dealing with previous cards' effects, is allowed, and rule modification is encouraged as an integral part of gameplay.

Game
The game consists of whatever the players define it as by creating and playing things. There are no initial rules, and while there may be conventions among certain groups of players, it is in the spirit of the game to spite and denounce these conventions, as well as to adhere to them religiously.

For many typical players, though, the game may be split into three logical parts: the deck creation, the play itself, and the epilogue.

Deck creation
A deck of cards consists of any number of cards, generally of a uniform size and of rigid enough paper stock that they may be reused. Some may bear artwork, writing or other game-relevant content created during past games, with a reasonable stock of cards that are blank at the start of gameplay. Some time may be taken to create cards before gameplay commences, although card creation may be more dynamic if no advance preparation is made, and it is suggested that the game be simply sprung upon a group of players, who may or may not have any idea what they are being caught up in. If the game has been played before, all past cards can be used in gameplay unless the game specifies otherwise, but perhaps not until the game has allowed them into play.

A typical group's conventions for deck creation follow: "Though cards are created at all times throughout the game (except the epilogue), it is necessary to start with at least some cards pre-made. Despite the name of the game, a deck of 80 to 150 cards is usual, depending on the desired duration of the game, and of these approximately half will be created before the start of play. If a group doesn't already possess a partial deck they may choose to start with fewer cards and to create most of the deck during play."

"Whether or not the group possesses a deck already (from previous games), they will usually want to add a few more cards, so the first phase of the game involves each player creating six or seven new cards to add to the deck. See structure of a card below."

"When the deck is ready, all of the cards (including blanks) are shuffled together and each player is dealt five cards. The remainder of the deck is placed in the centre of the table."

Play
The rules of game are determined as the game is played. There exists no fixed order of play or limit to the length or scope of the game. Such parameters may be set within the game but are of course subject to alteration.

One sample convention suggests the following: "Play proceeds clockwise beginning with the player on the dealer's left. On each player's turn, he/she draws a card from the central deck and then plays a card from his/her hand. Cards can be played to any player (including the person playing the card), or to the table (so that it affects everyone). Cards with lasting effects, such as awarding points or changing the game's rules, are kept on the table to remind players of those effects. Cards with no lasting effects, or cards that have been nullified, are placed in a discard pile."

"Blank cards can be made into playable cards at any time simply by drawing on them (see structure of a card)."

"Play continues until there are no cards left in the central deck and no one can play (if they have no cards that can be played in the current situation). The 'winner' is the player with the highest score of total points at the end of the game, though in some games points don't actually matter."

Epilogue
Since the cards created in any game may be used as the beginning of a deck for a future game, many players like to reduce the deck to a collection of their favourites. The epilogue is simply an opportunity for the players to collectively decide which cards to keep and which to discard (or set aside as not-for-play).

Many players believe that having their own cards favoured during the epilogue is the true "victory" of 1000 Blank White Cards, although the game's creator has never discarded or destroyed a card unless that action was specified within the scope of the game. Retaining and replaying those cards which seem at the moment less than perfect can help reduce a certain stagnation and tendency to over-think that can otherwise overtake the game's momentum.

One group of players in Boston (not the long-dispersed Harvard cadre) have introduced the idea of the "Suck Box":

"We don't like to destroy cards, even if they suck, so we have a notecard box called The Suck Box. If a player feels a card is boring and useless to gameplay, they will nominate it for admission to The Suck Box. All players present then vote (sometimes lobbying for their cases), and the card either goes into The Suck Box or gets to remain in the primary deck. Ironically, when The Suck Box was introduced, one player created a card for the express purpose of adding it to The Suck Box. However, the rest of us felt that it was too amusing a card and had to remain in the deck."

Structure of a card
At its simplest, a card is just that: a physical card, which may or may not have undergone any modifications. Its role in the game is both as itself and as whatever information it carries, which can be changed, erased or amended. The cards used vary widely in size, from the original 1$1/2$" x 3$1/2$" Vis-Ed brand flash cards, to half or full index cards, to simply sheets of A7 sized paper. Cards may be created with any marking medium and need not conform to any conventions of size or content unless specified within the scope of the game. Cards have been made of a wide range of substances, and modifying the shape or composition of a card is entirely acceptable: the original Vis-Ed box still contains a card, created by Plan 9 From Bell Labs developer Mycroftiv, to which a tablet of zinc has been affixed with adhesive tape; the card reads "Eat This!... In a few minutes, the ZINC will be entering your system." Many cards have been created which demanded their own modification, destruction or duplication, and many have been created which display nothing but a picture or text bearing no explicit significance whatsoever. Some have been eaten, burned, or cut and folded into other shapes.

The game does tend to fall into structural conventions, of which the following is a good example: "A card consists (usually) of a title, a picture and a description of its effect. The title should uniquely identify the card. The picture can be as simple as a stick figure, or as complex as the player likes. The description, or rule, is the part that affects the game. It can award or deny points, cause a player to miss a turn, change the direction of play, or do anything the player can think of. The rules written on cards in play make up the majority of the game's total ruleset."

In practice, these conventions can generate rather monotonous decks of one panel cartoons bearing point values, rules or both. As conceived, the game is far broader, as it is not inherently limited in length or scope, is radically self-modifying, and can contain references to, or actual instances of, other games or activities. The game can also encode algorithms (trivially functioning as a Turing machine), store real-world data, and hold or refer to non-card objects.

History
The game was originally created late in 1995 by Nathan McQuillen of Madison, Wisconsin. He was inspired by seeing a product at a local coffeehouse: a box of 1000 Vis-Ed brand blank white flash cards. He introduced "The game of 1000 blank white cards" a few days later into a mixed group including students, improvisational theatre members and club kids. Initial play sessions were frequent and high energy, but a fire consumed the regular venue shortly after the game's introduction. The game physically survived but with the loss of their regular meeting place the majority of the original players fell out of contact with one another, and soon most had moved on to other cities.

The game started to spread as a meme through various social networks, mostly collegiate, in the late 1990s. Aaron Mandel, a former Madison resident, brought the game to Harvard University and started an active playgroup which changed the size of the cards to the more standard half-index dimensions (2+1/2 x). Boston players Dave Packer and Stewart King created the first web content representing the game. Their graduation served to further spread the game to the west coast and onto the web. Subsequently, an article in GAMES Magazine and inclusion in the 2001 revision of Hoyle's Rules of Games established the game as an independent part of gaming culture. Various celebrities have also contributed cards to the game, including musicians Ben Folds and Jonatha Brooke, and cartoonist Bill Plympton.

The game's inventor and its original players have frequently expressed amusement at the spread of a game they regarded mostly as a brilliant but highly idiosyncratic bit of conceptual humor which provided them with an excuse to draw goofy cartoons.

title: 1000 Blank White Cards


text:
Imperial woodpecker

The imperial woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis) is a woodpecker species endemic to Mexico. If it is not extinct, it is the world's largest woodpecker species, at 56 – long. Researchers have discovered that the imperial woodpecker has slow climbing strides and a fast wing-flap rate compared with other woodpeckers. Owing to its close taxonomic relationship, and its similarity in appearance, to the ivory-billed woodpecker (C. principalis), it is sometimes called the Mexican ivory-billed woodpecker, but this name is also used for the extant pale-billed woodpecker (C. guatemalensis). The large and conspicuous bird has long been known to the native inhabitants of Mexico and was called in Nahuatl,  by the Tepehuán and  by the Tarahumara.

Description and ecology
The imperial woodpecker's typical size ranges from 56 to 60 cm. The male imperial woodpecker has a red-sided crest, centered black, but otherwise mostly black, with large white wing-patches, thin white “braces” on its mantle and a huge ivory-colored bill. They are all black except for the inner primaries, which are white-tipped, the white secondaries and a white scapular stripe which, unlike the ivory-billed woodpecker, does not extend onto the neck. The female is similar, but her crest is all black and (unlike the female ivory-bill) recurved at the top, lacking any red. Much larger than any other sympatric woodpecker, it is the only woodpecker in the area with solid black underparts. Its voice is reportedly toy trumpet-like. The bird was once widespread and, until the early 1950s, not uncommon throughout the Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico, from western Sonora and Chihuahua southwards to Jalisco and Michoacán. It is likely that, in the past, the woodpecker's range followed the Sierra Madre north into Arizona, but by the time it was scientifically described in the 19th century, it was already confined to Mexico. It has been suggested that it might occur in Arizona, and there is also a hypothetical record of it in 1958 in Big Bend National Park, Texas, however this is not mentioned in Oberholser's two-volume The Bird Life of Texas.

The imperial woodpecker prefers open montane forests made up of Durango, Mexican white, loblolly and Montezuma pines, as well as oaks, usually between 2100 and 2700 m above sea level. Most records are from elevations of 1,920 to 3,050 m, but there are records as low as 1,675 m. It feeds mainly on the insect larvae found underneath bark scaled from dead pine trees. There are many reports of more than four individuals, and this grouping behaviour may be related to its foraging specialisation. Breeding has been recorded between February and June, and probably one to four eggs are laid. A mated pair requires a very large area of untouched mature forest to survive, approximately 26 km2; outside the breeding season, the birds are reported to form small groups of up to 12 individuals and move about a wide area, apparently in response to the availability of food. The main food source, beetle larvae in snags, is probably distributed in patches and peaks within a short period of time. Consequently, feeding sites are probably best exploited by "nomadic" groups. If operating in groups of seven or eight individuals, the minimum area of old-growth forest for a group is 98 km2.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has released a film of the imperial woodpecker recorded in Mexico in 1956.

Decline and probable extinction
The imperial woodpecker is officially listed as "critically endangered (possibly extinct)" by the IUCN and BirdLife International. It was not historically a rare species within a suitable habitat, but the total population probably never numbered more than 8,000 individuals (Lammertink et al. 1996). Any remaining population is assumed to be tiny (numbering fewer than 50 mature individuals) based on the lack of confirmed records since 1956; analyses of remaining habitats indicate that no tracts remain which are large enough to support the species. The last confirmed record was from Durango in 1956 and the species is very likely now extinct. If they have gone extinct, it would have been due to habitat destruction and fragmentation combined with hunting. These factors are the reason why the species has not been seen in over 60 years, although there have been local reports of sightings. Researchers believe that their decline was also accelerated by active eradication campaigns conducted by logging interests and by over-hunting — for use in folk medicine and because nestlings were considered a delicacy by the Tarahumara. It has been hunted for sport, food and for medicinal purposes over a long period of time and feathers and bills were reportedly used in rituals by the Tepheuana and Huichol tribes in the south of Durango. Additionally, imperial woodpeckers are stunning birds and, as the species became increasingly rare, many were apparently shot by people who had never encountered such a bird and wanted to get a closer look. The habitat in which the imperial woodpecker was located was predominantly in coniferous forests (terrain levels at 2,700-2,900 m. elevation). The area in which they lived was abundant with large dead trees, the removal of which could be linked to their extinction. The area had been cleared and logged multiple times by 2010. Increasing effort in conservation biology is being devoted to the analysis of the extinction risk as well as the search for the rare, long unseen, species. There are a handful of more recent, unconfirmed sightings, the most recent of which closely followed the 2005 publication of the purported rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker. Lammertink et al. (1996), after extensively reviewing post-1956 reports, conclude that the species did indeed survive into the 1990s in the central part of its range, but also consider its continued survival very unlikely. According to them, the population was always restricted in historic times, although the species was indeed present in maximum density before a catastrophic decline during the 1950s. The lack of good records from that time is apparently based more on lack of research than on actual rarity, but this seems to have changed radically only one decade later.

Field research by Tim Gallagher and Martjan Lammertink, reported in Gallagher's 2013 book, found evidence — in the form of accounts by elderly residents in the bird's range who saw imperial woodpeckers decades earlier and who discussed their recollections with the researchers — that foresters working with Mexican logging companies in the 1950s told the local people that the woodpeckers were destroying valuable timber and encouraged the people to kill the birds. As part of this campaign, the foresters gave the local residents poison to smear on trees that the birds foraged on. Because groups of imperial woodpeckers tended to feed on a single huge, dead, old-growth pine tree for as long as two weeks, applying poison to such a tree would be an effective way to wipe out a group of up to one dozen of these huge woodpeckers — and, perhaps, even to kill off succeeding groups of the birds that might move into the area and be attracted to the same tree. Gallagher suspects that such a campaign of poisoning may be the key to the species' apparent catastrophic population crash in the 1950s, which has hitherto lacked a satisfactory explanation. A campaign of poisoning could well have killed whole groups of the bird in a short time. The premise of protecting valuable timber from the woodpeckers was, in fact, baseless. Imperial woodpeckers do not forage on or excavate nest or roosting holes in live, healthy trees.

In Gallagher's nonfiction account The Grail Bird (2006), he discusses how difficult the search is for the imperial woodpecker due to its dangerous location. In Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental, there are major marijuana and opium poppy-growing regions that are patrolled by armed guards. The drug cartels often kill anyone who comes too close to their crops.

A search of the multi-institution online specimen database VertNet reveals that only 144 physical specimens of the imperial woodpecker exist, including only three known complete skeletons. An overlooked woodpecker skeleton from the Natural History Museum at Tring appears to also belong to the species. The species is also known from a single amateur film from 1956 depicting one bird climbing, foraging and flying. The film has been restored and released by Cornell University. Gallagher's inspiration to search for the imperial woodpecker was this 1956 film, taken by dentist William Rhein, who made several trips to Mexico in search of the imperial woodpecker. This is the only known photographic record of the species.

The imperial woodpecker has been considered to be extinct by the Government of Mexico since 2001. However, its rediscovery or reintroduction would prompt immediate protection under the law.

title: Imperial woodpecker


text:
European Patent Convention

The European Patent Convention (EPC), also known as the Convention on the Grant of European Patents of 5 October 1973, is a multilateral treaty instituting the European Patent Organisation and providing an autonomous legal system according to which European patents are granted. The term European patent is used to refer to patents granted under the European Patent Convention. However, a European patent is not a unitary right, but a group of essentially independent nationally enforceable, nationally revocable patents, subject to central revocation or narrowing as a group pursuant to two types of unified, post-grant procedures: a time-limited opposition procedure, which can be initiated by any person except the patent proprietor, and limitation and revocation procedures, which can be initiated by the patent proprietor only.

The EPC provides a legal framework for the granting of European patents, via a single, harmonised procedure before the European Patent Office (EPO). A single patent application, in one language, may be filed at the EPO in Munich, at its branch in The Hague, at its sub-office in Berlin, or at a national patent office of a Contracting State, if the national law of the State so permits.

History
In September 1949, French Senator Henri Longchambon proposed to the Council of Europe the creation of a European Patent Office. His proposal, known as the "Longchambon plan", marked the beginning of the work on a European patent law aimed at a "European patent". His plan was however not found to be practicable by the Council's Committee of Experts in patent matters. The meetings of the Committee nevertheless led to two Conventions, one on the formalities required for patent applications (1953) and one on the international classification of patent (1954). The Council's Committee then carried on its work on substantive patent law, resulting in the signature of the Strasbourg Patent Convention in 1963.

In 1973, the Munich Diplomatic Conference for the setting up of a European System for the Grant of Patents took place and the Convention was then signed in Munich (the Convention is sometimes known as the "Munich Convention"). The signature of the Convention was the accomplishment of a decade-long discussion during which Kurt Haertel, considered by many as the father of the European Patent Organisation, and François Savignon played a decisive role.

The Convention was officially signed by 16 countries on 5 October 1973.

The Convention entered into force on 7 October 1977 for the following first countries: Belgium, Germany (then West Germany), France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and on 1 May 1978 for Sweden. However, the first patent applications were filed on 1 June 1978 (date fixed by the Administrative Council which held its first meeting on 19 October 1977). Subsequently, other countries have joined the EPC.

The EPC is separate from the European Union (EU), and its membership is different; Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Turkey, Monaco, Iceland, Norway, North Macedonia, San Marino, Albania, Serbia, the United Kingdom, and Montenegro are party to the EPC but are not members of the EU. Further, the EU is not a party to the EPC, although all members of the EU are party to the EPC. The Convention is, as of October 2022, in force in 39 countries. Montenegro became the 39th Contracting State on 1 October 2022.

A diplomatic conference was held in November 2000 in Munich to revise the Convention, amongst other things to integrate in the EPC new developments in international law and to add a level of judicial review of the Boards of Appeal decisions. The revised text, informally called the EPC 2000, entered into force on 13 December 2007.

Cooperation agreements with non-contracting states: extension and validation agreements
Throughout the history of the EPC, some non-contracting States have concluded cooperation agreements with the European Patent Organisation, known as extension or validation agreements. These states then became "extension states" or "validation states", which means that European patents granted by the EPO may be extended to those countries through the payment of additional fees and completion of certain formalities. Such cooperation agreements are concluded by the President of the European Patent Office on behalf of the European Patent Organisation pursuant to, are not based on a "direct application of the EPC but solely on national law modelled on the EPC", and exist to assist with the establishment of national property rights in these states. As is the case in EPO contracting states, the rights conferred to European patents validated/extended to these states are the same as national patents in those states. However, the extension of a European patent or patent application to these states is "not subject to the jurisdiction of the [EPO] boards of appeal."

As of October 2022, Bosnia and Herzegovina has an extension agreement with the EPO so that, in effect, this state can be designated in a European patent application. Several other "extension states" have since become states parties to the EPC. Furthermore, so-called "validation agreements" with Morocco, Moldova, Tunisia, and Cambodia are also in effect since 1 March 2015, 1 November 2015, 1 December 2017, and 1 March 2018, respectively. A further validation agreement was signed with Georgia on 31 October 2019 and entered into force on 15 January 2024.

Legal nature and content
The European Patent Convention is "a special agreement within the meaning of Article 19 of the Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, signed in Paris on 20 March 1883 and last revised on 14 July 1967, and a regional patent treaty within the meaning of Article 45, paragraph 1, of the Patent Cooperation Treaty of 19 June 1970." The European Patent Convention currently does not lead to the grant of centrally enforceable patents in all 39 countries, although the European Union patent would allow for unitary effect: centrally enforceability throughout 24 of the 27 countries of the European Union.

The content of the Convention includes several texts in addition to the main 178 articles. These additional texts, which are integral parts of the Convention, are:
 * the "Implementing Regulations to the Convention on the Grant of European patents", commonly known as the "Implementing Regulations". The function of the Implementing Regulations is "to determine in more detail how the Articles should be applied". In case of conflict between the provisions of the EPC and those of the Implementing Regulations, the provisions of the EPC prevail.
 * the "Protocol on Jurisdiction and the recognition of decisions in respect of the right to the grant of a European patent", commonly known as the "Protocol on Recognition". This protocol deals with the right to the grant of a European patent but exclusively applies to European patent applications.
 * the "Protocol on Privileges and Immunities of the European Patent Organisation", commonly known as the "Protocol on Privileges and Immunities";
 * the "Protocol on the Centralisation of the European Patent System and on its Introduction", commonly known as the "Protocol on Centralisation";
 * the "Protocol on the Interpretation of Article 69 of the Convention";
 * the "Protocol on the Staff Complement of the European Patent Office at The Hague", commonly known as the "Protocol on Staff Complement".

Substantive patent law
One of the most important articles of the Convention,, entitled "Patentable inventions", states: "European patents shall be granted for any inventions, in all fields of technology, providing that they are new, involve an inventive step, and are susceptible of industrial application."

This article constitutes the "fundamental provision of the EPC which governs the patentability of inventions".

However, the EPC provides further indications on what is and is not patentable. Specifically, the EPC sets forth exclusions under Article 52(2) and (3) EPC and exclusions under Article 53 EPC.

First, discoveries, scientific theories, mathematical methods, aesthetic creations, schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, programs for computers and presentations of information are not regarded as inventions and are excluded from patentability only to the extent that the invention relates to those areas as such. This is "a negative, non-exhaustive list of what should not be regarded as an invention within the meaning of Article 52(1) EPC." (For further information, see also: Software patents under the EPC).

The second set of exclusions, or exceptions, include:
 * Inventions contrary to "ordre public" or morality (Article 53(a) EPC),
 * Plant or animal varieties and essentially biological processes for the production of plants and animals (Article 53(b) EPC), and
 * Methods for treatment of the human or animal body by surgery or therapy, and diagnostic methods practised on the human or animal body (Article 53(c) EPC), which have been excluded for "socio-ethical considerations and considerations of public health". Products, "in particular substances or compositions", for use in any of these therapeutic or diagnostic methods are not excluded from patentability, however.

Unified prosecution phase
The Convention also includes provisions setting out filing requirements of European applications, the procedure up to grant, the opposition procedure and other aspects relating to the prosecution of patent applications under the Convention.

European patent applications may be filed in any language, but they are prosecuted only in one of the three official languages of the EPO – English, French and German. If an application is filed in another language than an official language, a translation must be filed into one of the three official languages, within two months from the date of filing. The official language of filing (or of the translation) is adopted as the "language of proceedings" and is used by the EPO for communications.

European patent applications are prosecuted in a similar fashion to most patent systems – the invention is searched and published, and subsequently examined for compliance with the requirements of the EPC.

During the prosecution phase, a European patent is a single regional proceeding, and "the grant of a European patent may be requested for one or more of the Contracting States." All Contracting States are considered designated upon filing of a European patent application. and the designations need to be "confirmed" later during the procedure through the payment of designation fees. Once granted by the EPO, a European patent comes into existence effectively as a group of national patents in each of the designated Contracting States.

Opposition
There are only two types of centrally executed procedures after grant, the opposition procedure and the limitation and revocation procedures. The opposition procedure, governed by the EPC, allows third parties to file an opposition against a European patent within 9 months of the date of grant of that patent. It is a quasi-judicial process, subject to appeal, which can lead to maintenance, maintenance in amended form or revocation of a European patent. Simultaneously to the opposition, a European patent may be the subject of litigation at a national level (for example an infringement dispute). National courts may suspend such infringement proceedings pending outcome of the opposition proceedings to avoid proceedings running in parallel and the uncertainties that may arise from that.

Grant, effect and need for translations
In contrast to the unified, regional character of a European patent application, the granted European patent does not comprise, in effect, any such unitary character, except for the opposition procedure. In other words, one European patent in one Contracting State is effectively independent of the same European patent in each other Contracting State, except for the opposition procedure.

A European patent confers rights on its proprietor, in each Contracting State in respect of which it is granted, from the date of publication of the mention of its grant in the European Patent Bulletin. That is also the date of publication of the B1 document, i.e. the European patent specification. This means that the European patent is granted and confers rights in all its designated Contracting States at the date of mention of the grant, whether or not a prescribed translation is filed with a national patent office later on (though the right may later be deemed never to have existed in any particular State if a translation is not subsequently filed in time, as described below).

A translation of a granted European patent must be filed in some EPC Contracting States to avoid loss of right. Namely, in the Contracting States which have "prescribe[d] that if the text, in which the European Patent Office intends to grant a European patent (...) is not drawn up in one of its official languages, the applicant for or proprietor of the patent shall supply to its central industrial property office a translation of this text in one of its official languages at his option or, where that State has prescribed the use of one specific official language, in that language". The European patent is void ab initio in a designated Contracting State where the required translation (if required) is not filed within the prescribed time limit after grant. In other Contracting States, no translation needs to be filed, for example in Ireland if the European patent is in English. In those Contracting States where the London Agreement is in force the requirement to file a translation of the European patent has been entirely or partially waived. If a translation is required, a fee covering the publication of said translation may be due as well.

Enforcement and validity
Almost all attributes of a European patent in a Contracting State, i.e. ownership, validity, and infringement, are determined independently under respective national law, except for the opposition procedure, limitation procedure, and revocation procedure as discussed above. Though the EPC imposes some common limits, the EPC expressly adopts national law for interpretation of all substantive attributes of a European patent in a Contracting State, with a few exceptions.

Infringement
Infringement is remitted entirely to national law and to national courts. In one of its very few substantive interventions into national law, the EPC requires that national courts must consider the "direct product of a patented process" to be an infringement. The "extent of the protection" conferred by a European patent is determined primarily by reference to the claims of the European patent (rather than by the disclosure of the specification and drawings, as in some older patent systems), though the description and drawings are to be used as interpretive aids in determining the meaning of the claims. A "Protocol on the Interpretation of Article 69 EPC" provides further guidance, that claims are to be construed using a "fair" middle position, neither "strict, literal" nor as mere guidelines to considering the description and drawings, though of course even the protocol is subject to national interpretation. The authentic text of a European patent application and of a European patent are the documents in the language of the proceedings.

All other substantive rights attached to a European patent in a Contracting State, such as what acts constitute infringement (indirect and divided infringement, infringement by equivalents, extraterritorial infringement, infringement outside the term of the patent with economic effect during the term of the patent, infringement of product claims by processes for making or using, exports, assembly of parts into an infringing whole, etc.), the effect of prosecution history on interpretation of the claims, remedies for infringement or bad faith enforcement (injunction, damages, attorney fees, other civil penalties for wilful infringement, etc.), equitable defences, coexistence of an EP national daughter and a national patent for identical subject matter, ownership and assignment, extensions to patent term for regulatory approval, etc., are expressly remitted to national law.

For a period in the late-1990s, national courts issued cross-border injunctions covering all EP jurisdictions, but this has been limited by the European Court of Justice. In two cases in July 2006 interpreting Articles 6.1 and 16.4 of the Brussels Convention, the European Court of Justice held that European patents are national rights that must be enforced nationally, that it was "unavoidable" that infringements of the same European patent have to be litigated in each relevant national court, even if the lawsuit is against the same group of companies, and that cross-border injunctions are not available.

Validity
Validity is also remitted largely to national law and national courts. limits the application of national law to only the following grounds of invalidity, and specifies that the standards for each ground are those of national law:

 * if the subject-matter of the European patent is not patentable within the terms of Articles 52 to 57 EPC (see "Substantive patent law" section above);
 * if the disclosure does not permit the invention to be carried out by a person skilled in the art;
 * if amendments have been made such that the subject-matter extends beyond the content of the application as filed;
 * if the claims have been broadened post-grant, e.g. in opposition proceedings;
 * an improper proprietor —in some jurisdictions, only the person pretending to be entitled to the European patent can raise this specific ground, so that the resulting nullity of the patent may be relative to some persons only —.

Term (duration) of a European patent
The EPC requires all jurisdictions to give a European patent a term of 20 years from the filing date, the filing date being the actual date of filing an application for a European patent or the date of filing of an international application under the PCT designating the EPO. The filing date is not necessarily the priority date, which can be up to one year earlier. The term of a granted European patent may be extended under national law if national law provides term extension to compensate for pre-marketing regulatory approval. For EEA member states this is by means of a supplementary protection certificate (SPC).

Relation with the Patent Cooperation Treaty
A European patent application may result from the filing of an international application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), i.e. the filing of a PCT application, and then the entry into "European regional phase", i.e. the transition from the international to the European procedural stages. The European patent application is therefore said to be a "Euro-PCT application" and the EPO is said to act as a designated or elected Office. In case of conflict between the provisions of the EPC and those of the PCT, the provisions of the PCT and its Regulations prevail over those of the EPC.

Twelve EPC Contracting States, namely Belgium, Cyprus, France, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, the Netherlands, San Marino, and Slovenia, have "closed their national route". This means that, for these countries, it is not possible to obtain a national patent through the international (PCT) phase without entering into the regional European phase and obtaining a European patent. The "national route" for Italy was closed until 30 June 2020, but Italy then reopened it for PCT applications filed on or after 1 July 2020.

title: European Patent Convention


text:
Indo-Australian Plate

The Indo-Australian Plate is a major tectonic plate that includes the continent of Australia and the surrounding ocean and extends north-west to include the Indian subcontinent and the adjacent waters. It was formed by the fusion of the Indian and the Australian plates approximately 43 million years ago. The fusion happened when the mid-ocean ridge in the Indian Ocean, which separated the two plates, ceased spreading. Contemporary models suggest at present there is a deformation zone between the Indian and Australian plates with both earthquake and global satellite navigation system data indicating that India and Australia are not moving on the same vectors northward. These observations are consistent with earlier evidence that the Indian Plate and Australian Plate have been acting as separate plates for at least the last 3 million years. In due course, some expect a localized boundary to reform between the Indian and Australian plates.

Regions
Australia-New Guinea (Mainland Australia, New Guinea, and.Tasmania), the Indian subcontinent, and Zealandia (New Caledonia, New Zealand, and Norfolk Island) are all fragments of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana. As the ocean floor broke apart, these land masses fragmented from one another, and for a time these centers were thought to be dormant and fused into a single plate. However, research in the early 21st century indicates plate separation of the Indo-Australian Plate may have already occurred.

Characteristics
The eastern side of the plate is the convergent boundary with the Pacific Plate. The Pacific Plate sinks below the Australian plate and forms the Kermadec Trench and the island arcs of Tonga and Kermadec. New Zealand is situated along the southeastern boundary of the plate, which with New Caledonia makes up the southern and northern ends of the ancient landmass of Zealandia, which separated from Australia 85 million years ago. The central part of Zealandia sank under the sea.

The southern margin of the plate forms a divergent boundary with the Antarctic Plate. The western side is subdivided by the Indian Plate that borders the Arabian Plate to the north and the African Plate to the south. The northern margin of the Indian Plate forms a convergent boundary with the Eurasian Plate, which constitutes the active orogenic process of the Himalayas and the Hindukush mountains.

The northeast side of the Australian Plate forms a subduction boundary with the Eurasian Plate in the Indian Ocean between the borders of Bangladesh and Burma and to the southwest of the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo. Along the northern Ninety East Ridge under the Indian Ocean there appears to be a weakness zone where the Indian and Australian plates are going different ways. The subsidence boundary through Indonesia is reflected in the Wallace line.

Plate movements
The eastern part (Australian Plate) is moving northward at the rate of 5.6 cm per year while the western part (Indian Plate) is moving only at the rate of 3.7 cm per year due to the impediment of the Himalayas. In terms of the middle of India and Australia's landmasses, Australia is moving northward at 3 cm per year relative to India. This differential movement has resulted in the compression of the former plate near its centre at Sumatra and the division into the separate Indian and Australian plates again.

A third plate, known as the Capricorn Plate, may also be separating off the western side of the Indian Plate as part of the continued breakup of the Indo-Australian Plate.

Separation
Recent studies, and evidence from seismic events such as the 2012 Indian Ocean earthquakes, suggest that the Indo-Australian Plate may have broken up into two or three separate plates due primarily to stresses induced by the collision of the Indo-Australian Plate with Eurasia along what later became the Himalayas, and that the Indian Plate and Australian Plate may have been separate since at least.

title: Indo-Australian Plate


text:
Brixton Market

Brixton Market comprises a street market in the centre of Brixton, south London, and the adjacent covered market areas in nearby arcades Reliance Arcade, Market Row and Granville Arcade (rebranded as 'Brixton Village' in 2009).

The market sells a wide range of foods and goods but is best known for its African and Caribbean produce, which reflect the diverse community of Brixton and surrounding areas of Lambeth. The Street Market is managed by the London Borough of Lambeth. The covered arcades have always been in private ownership, although substantial public funding was provided for their refurbishment under the Brixton Challenge grant scheme.

The market was severely damaged by fire on 16 July 2022.

History
The Market began on Atlantic Road in the 1870s and subsequently spread to Brixton Road which had a very wide footway. Brixton then was a rapidly expanding London railway suburb with newly opening shops, including the first London branch of David Greig at 54-58 Atlantic Road in 1870, and London's first purpose-built department store, Bon Marché, on Brixton Road in 1877. The market was a popular attraction, with shoppers being entertained by street musicians.

Electric Avenue which is now part of the street market was built in the 1880s and was one of the first streets to have electric light. Glazed iron canopies covered the footpath, but these were significantly damaged by WW2 bombs, and finally removed in the 1980s. The song "Electric Avenue" was written by Eddy Grant referring to this area of the market. In 2016, Electric Avenue was refurbished with funding from the Mayor of London's High Street Fund, Lambeth Council, Transport for London and the Heritage Lottery fund to include an illuminated sign celebrating the area's history.

The covered market arcades
The market arcades were built in the 1920s and 1930s when road widening on Brixton Road forced traders from their established pitches.

Reliance Arcade, 455 Brixton Road (c1924) provides a narrow pedestrian route from Brixton Road to Electric Lane. It incorporates the original Georgian house and has a beautiful Egyptian tomb facade to Electric Lane; it was extended forward by Ernest J Thomas in 1931. Inside there are small shops no larger than market stalls and a glazed roof provide the light.

Reliance Arcade is Grade II listed, and was added to English Heritage's Heritage At Risk Register in October 2014.

Market Row, 40–44 Atlantic Road was designed by Andrews and Peascod in 1928. It was built in the back yards of existing premises and links Atlantic Road, Coldharbour Lane and Electric Lane. The interior is double-height and windows in the roof provide light.

Brixton Village, Coldharbour Lane was built as Granville Arcade in 1937 to designs of Alfred and Vincent Burr; the developer was Philip Granville-Grossman. It was opened by actor Carl Brisson on 6 May 1937. It has an interior of narrow covered streets called 'Avenues', and is double-height, similar to Market Row. There are over 100 shops. It links Coldharbour Lane, Atlantic Road and Popes Road.

The three market arcades in close proximity, forming an extensive network of stalls, are rare survivals and their special character is what marks out Brixton as distinctive from other suburban shopping centres: a mixture of history, interesting architecture, the variety of goods on sale and the cultural mix of Brixton, known as the symbolic 'soul of black Britain'.

Since 2011, the shops in Brixton Village and, more recently, Market Row and Reliance Arcade have been increasingly converted into cafes and restaurants, serving a wide range of different cuisines. As a result, they are now open 8:00 am – 11.30 pm every day except Monday, when they shut at 6:00 pm.

Proposed redevelopment of covered market arcades (2008–2009)
In 2007, Market Row and Brixton Village were sold along with the other London market interests of APL Ocean Ltd to London & Associated Properties. In 2008, the new owners released proposals to redevelop the Brixton Village covered market.

The proposal included the removal of the existing building and the building of a 10-storey privately owned residential tower block and private park, above a new market building.

In January 2009, London and Associated Properties employed communications company Four Communications to undertake a survey of local opinion. Concerns were raised on the Brixton Community website Urban 75 that the survey was one sided, only available in English.

Friends of Brixton Market, traders and residents ran a successful campaign against the proposals.

Paul Bakalite's proposal for Listing was strongly supported by the Twentieth Century Society. In April 2010 the Secretary of State of the Department of Culture (DCMS) announced that the government had overturned its previous decision not award heritage protection to these three arcades and declared all three Grade II listed buildings. They were listed by virtue of their cultural importance and contribution to the social and economic history of Brixton, particularly since the 1950s as one of the principal hearts of the Afro-Caribbean community in London, as well as for their architectural importance since such arcades, once more common, are now rare.

Controversial redevelopment plans for Brixton Arches (2016–2017)
In 2015, Network Rail contacted the merchants trading from the commercial premises located under the railway arches on Atlantic Road indicating plans to close those premises for a year for refurbishment as part of the Brixton Central masterplan for redevelopment of the area. This led to a public outcry from traders, many of whom had been occupying their retail space for decades, claiming that this closure was an excuse to increase rents as they would be able to return to occupy the same space, but with a 350% increase of their rents.

The traders and community launched the Save Brixton Arches campaign, which fed into the anti-gentrification movement already underway within the Brixton community and culminated in a protest at the local council meeting where community activists declared the "death of Brixton" after the plans were approved. In 2017, the majority of the arches traders ceased trading and hoardings were installed over the empty premises, but development has stalled due to complications involving the leases of two of the tenants.

During the same decade a series of properties comprosing most of Brixton Market were purchased by Hondo a company controlled by Taylor McWilliams an American investor. McWilliams has since proposed building an office tower twenty stories tall on Electric Avenue.

Individuals

 * David Copeland
 * Eddy Grant
 * Sir John Major
 * Taylor McWilliams

Market Roads in Brixton

 * Pope's Road
 * Electric Avenue
 * Brixton Station Road

title: Brixton Market