Back on October 10th, John Leonard gave a Georgia Tech Robotics Institute talk about MIT's DARPA Urban Grand Challenge experience.  The MIT entry, a Land Rover LR3 named Talos, came in fourth place overall (out of 6 finishers and 11 qualifiers).  I thought the most interesting aspect of the design was that it was originally intended to be a "low cost" solution (meaning many $6k SICK lidars, low-cost cameras, and radars), but that ultimately the success of the design hinged on the use of the $75k Velodyne lidar and an equally (or more) expensive Applanix GPS plus Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) combo.  Regardless, it was an impressive piece of engineering, and they have released much of their code and driving datasets to the public.  Be sure to check out the rest of the post below to see some cool point-cloud visualizations made possible by those phenomenal Velodyne lidars!