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While Qinetiq has managed two weeks, DARPA is working on a five-year lifespan for its vehicles through the VULTURE program.
Additional specs: 450 kg payload, 5kW payload power and flight in the 60k ft region.

While Qinetiq has managed two weeks, DARPA is working on a five-year lifespan for its vehicles through the VULTURE program.
Additional specs: 450 kg payload, 5kW payload power and flight in the 60k ft region.

Wrong solution. Ditch the drivers instead.

More info on the DARPA developed radar being tested here. The A160T program has had a few crashes over the last few years, even before it got to Belize. That said, it is a challenging project, so some accidents are inevitable.

A great vacation spot for diving, but flight testing?

They were testing the DARPA developed Forester foliage-penetrating radar over Belize's dense jungle canopies. They needed a stable platform, so it had to be a rotorcraft. Not sure why they chose a a fairly new unmanned aircraft as the test bed. Aviation Week has been covering the A160T and the testing down there pretty extensively.

Their most recent direction has a decidedly "open source" feel to it ... and you still have a chance to submit proposals: http://www.darpa.mil/news/2010/SystemF6NewsRelease.pdf

There area plenty of other ideas to deal with noisy chips.. I'd point out DARPA's SyNAPSE program as an example. Due to quantum constraints, the future of deterministic computation must eventually deal with the noise in a robust manner. The above efforts are focusing on memristor technology.

I don't know whether stochastic architectures do better than noisy memristor ones, but either way we'll have to learn how to program in an environment that the least predictable element is not the one at the console.

I guess someone has never heard of DARPA.

http://www.darpa.mil/

Judging by the demo video, they're only going to be traveling around 30kph, with about 1.5 meters between them.
They might as well dispense with the engine in the "autonomous" car and just have the lead car pull it with a chain
I wouldn't be surprised if they have a police escort when they start their voyage as well.

This is hardly autonomous and looks well behind the technology already demoed by the DARPA challenges.

This represents the first solar-powered flights ever.

And we're still working on them.

Do you want explosions

Nope. Competitors in DARPA autonomous driving tests are not encouraged to explode. See here:

http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp

Computer games can provide the perfect measuring environment: you control exactly what data they have, etc.

Simulations are all good, but look at the massive difference between them and reality. Sure you can control what data they get, but it's rarely as complex and variable as real-world.
Throw in AI that can get anywhere close to working with that 'real-world' data, plus trying to race around a circuit against agressive oppositoin, and that would be impressive.

The possibility exists for robot cars to be manufactured by humans. But I'm not sure they have crossed all the hurdles yet to be trusted on the road.

It is a big political and social hurdle, and really not just a technological one. There are still technological milestones to be crossed, however, before robotic vehicles could be safely released in an uncontrolled environment such as the open road.

For now, it's just things like trains that robots run.

Ever hear of the DARPA Urban challenge that was conducted in 2007?

And that was 4 years ago...

FYI,
Darpa's Budget is about $3 Billion
http://www.darpa.mil/Docs/FY2011PresBudget28Jan10%20Final.pdf

Just in comparison Nasa's budget is about $18 billion

The NSF (National science fund) is about $7.5-8 Billion.

Also for the cost of the bank bailout($700Billion) we could of gone to mars and back($55Billion) about 13-14 times

U.S. government: Any amount of money for killing people (DARPA), but can't fix the terribly abusive, broken health system.

Sorry, the title of this article is pretty misleading. DARPAis working on missile defense and high energy laser technology. The current lofty plans for this group? Three video games.

I laud this effort. It's something we desperately need to do to stay competitive. But there's no need to oversensationalize.

Man that would be one expensive pr0n habit.

300 Megabit/sec Single Access (Ku band) TDRSS service was priced at USD$180 per minute in 1997. Adjusting for inflation, that would be over $240 in 2009, not accounting for likely price increases due to the growth in demand for satellite communications bandwidth during the GWOT.

I won't even mention the rather odious web content filtering that NASA uses these days...

Your comment was modded funny because the competition had ZERO affiliation with MIT.

https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/FAQ.aspx
https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/rules.aspx

Nowhere does it mention any MIT participation in administrating the contest. You could have verified this yourself in ten seconds. You are a retard.

Your comment was modded funny because the competition had ZERO affiliation with MIT.

https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/FAQ.aspx
https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/rules.aspx

Nowhere does it mention any MIT participation in administrating the contest. You could have verified this yourself in ten seconds. You are a retard.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. http://www.darpa.mil/

Congratulations to MIT for winning. https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/

You want a high tech cure for distracted driving? Easy. Get rid of the driver.

The argument would be "You're infringing on my rights! It's my right as an American to drive!", even though driving is a privilege. It's just another step towards becoming a nanny state...

You want a high tech cure for distracted driving? Easy. Get rid of the driver.

The average person may think that $40,000 is a lot... but it's nothing in terms of operating budgets for even medium sized companies. From the Darpa site, looking at their unclassified budget for 2010 ( http://www.darpa.mil/Docs/2010PBDARPAMay2009.pdf ) (That's a PDF, by the way, and also has numbers for 2009 and 2008), you can see that the budget easily runs into the billions of dollars. For a comparison, forty thousand dollars is 0.004 PERCENT of one billion dollars. To someone with a salary of seventy five thousand dollars a year, the equivalent percentage would be 3 dollars. That's barely pocket change, and it assumes a budget much lower than the actual operating budget of DARPA. Taking this into consideration, that's pretty cheap. Especially if they're planning to study anything by doing this (and if you think they wont get SOMETHING useful out of this, then you're even denser than I am), that's a relative bargain. Even if they DON'T get anything worthwhile out of this contest, the publicity alone is probably worth it when you consider possible recruits that they attract because of increased interest. Your claim that they are 'wasting taxpayer money' is pure FUD, and, to be honest, even if it wasn't, $40k isn't even a drop in the bucket of the 2.3 TRILLION dollars that was collected in taxes in 2008.

The purpose of this exercise can be found here:

To mark the 40th Anniversary of the Internet, DARPA is hosting the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

the key is the degree of solids loading to filler. the silver particle TIMs have solids thermal conductivities of 200-400W/m-K depending on what they have in them, but the filler is usually single digit or less. The effective thermal conductivity will depend on that loading and how well the particles 'bridge' from surface to surface. In addition, you have to fill all the microvoids well (which is why you still need a certain amount of viscous binder) or you'll get little air gap insulators. AND, there's always the question of cycling behavior, as most pastes will experience a degree of "thermal settling" over a break-in period (either good or bad) and pump-out over longer times (usually bad). All of this will depend on the thermal AND mechanical properties of the binder and solids.

Anybody could load a binder with carbon and get a high k material. Getting one that applies well, adheres well, stays good over time, etc., is where the money's at. So far, arctic silver has the lead (and name recognition) with effective material thermal k around 12W/mK or so I think. Diamond/carbon loading could be good, but much more analysis is required to be conclusive. Heck, DARPA's kicking millions into a thermal interface material program. I guarantee you that someone's putting some form of carbon in there. Here's hoping for some commercial fallout in the near term. http://www.darpa.mil/MTO/programs/nti/index.html

I was going to say DARPA already has a project working on this, but I was wrong.
They have three (or more).

DARPA's ongoing research is listed on their site. Have a look.
http://www.darpa.mil/off_programs.html

I was going to say DARPA already has a project working on this, but I was wrong.
They have three (or more).

DARPA's ongoing research is listed on their site. Have a look.
http://www.darpa.mil/off_programs.html

I was going to say DARPA already has a project working on this, but I was wrong.
They have three (or more).

DARPA's ongoing research is listed on their site. Have a look.
http://www.darpa.mil/off_programs.html

I was going to say DARPA already has a project working on this, but I was wrong.
They have three (or more).

DARPA's ongoing research is listed on their site. Have a look.
http://www.darpa.mil/off_programs.html

. . . but the article links to the DARPA publication in question (at http://www.darpa.mil/Docs/StratPlan09.pdf , in case you missed the link that's in the first paragraph of the NetWorkWorld article).

And right there on page 14/57:

Networks: self-forming, robust, self-defending networks at the strategic and tactical level are the key to network-centric warfare; these networks will use spectrum far more efficiently and resist disruption if the GPS time signal is unavailable (Section 3.1).

And on page 18/57:

The DoD is in the middle of a transformation to what is often termed "Network-Centric Operations." The promise of network-centric operations is to turn information superiority into combat power [...] These networks must be at least as reliable, available, secure and survivable as the weapons and forces they connect.

. . . unless you're suggesting DARPA got hax0r3d?

Possibly part of the reason they want to cancel the F-22. Yes, I think UAV's will eventually be the planes of the future, but you still need manned aircraft for a while. With a UAV, you have no environmental system for a pilot, plane can out turn (G's) one with a pilot, and most importantly, you don't put the pilots life at risk.

That makes sense but if that was the real reason for the proposed cancellation of the F-22, you'd think the J-UCAS program would not have been canceled (for the most part). I honestly doubt those in Congress have any clue about what these systems do. I used to work in defense and it is true that there is a ton of waste but the main reason for that is that the military customer never gives a good set of requirements and they constantly change what they want over and over. Then the contractor gets the blame when surprise surprise it costs twice at the end. There needs to be more planning up front.

Your pocket calculator is millions of times faster than you, and Google (a computer system) is millions of times faster at finding information than you are.

Computers can't think yet, but they will eventually. You can watch the progress.

The High Priests have already had there chance to do this and failed, repeatedly. Now they are just throwing more money at them.

This should be an open grand challenge with clear rules like the autonomous vehicle challenge was.
http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/

Even I was surprised at how well they managed to get these cars to drive themselves.

I am sure the same would happen with other AI problems if a large enough prize was put out there.

What you do, is build stuff and fuck the rest of them.

It's that simple.

In the GP's example of the DARPA grand challenge, I'm not sure it's quite that simple.

I mean, if you're competing in the DARPA urban challenge, you need several things.

A system combining a high precision GPS with high precision inertial measurement and an Omnistar subscription. Budget: $80,000
A Velodyne HD LIDAR - Budget $75,000
Five count SICK LMS-291 LIDARs - budget 5*$7000 = $35,000
38 motivated, intelligent engineers, programmers and administrators for 1 year. 38*$50,000 = $1,900,000

I'm sure in the computer programming world you can program the next big thing on your home computer with free tools. However, that does not generalise to everything. To develop some cutting edge technologies you also need money and competent people.

I agree with just about everything you've said, except for the DARPA bit :-) The DARPA Urban Challenge worked to resolve some of the automated interaction stuff, and was rather successful. Check it out at http://www.darpa.mil/GRANDCHALLENGE/

Pentagon 09 budget request $750M to fund hypersonic jet."

Pretty much all that exists of the project is this dodgy CGI animation which is not new, this (pdf) programme outline and some preliminary research into the engine The news here is that they want your money to do more research next year. This Fox news piece is to help smooth the way.

It's no secret, nor is it new...

http://www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/Falcon.htm

August 2007
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/blackswift-retu.html

March 2008
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/11/darpa_hypersonic_blackswift_details_released/

It's also been on the Military Channel, and Discovery...

I know this doesn't apply for all labs, but where I work it's not finances that are the main shortcoming. Sure, an increase in finance could help us, but even doubling our budget would leave us with more money than we can spend. It's the interference with scientific research that really gets in the way.

My fear is also that if science gets a huge boost in spending, the money would not all go to equally well thought out and worthy causes. Mismanagement is a big problem when the budget goes up.

Also, it might be worth noting that a small, but not unnoticeable percentage of the DoD budget goes to scientific research. I don't mean to troll, but a lot of military research also has civilian uses, just take a look at the list of DARPA research grants and imagine how valuable some of those things could be for civilian life. http://www.darpa.mil/body/off_programs.html

But all in all I do agree with you, a switch of focus from military to science would be nice, but the switch should not be financial, people need to realize that science holds such great promise that it's worth investing in.

I second this. As a Systems/Network Administrator for the Deep Green DARPA project (contractor side), I believe that I can safely say that the contractors get to have all the fun.

Yeah, great story, manned and unmanned vehicles in same environs etc.

Hmm.. something missing here, pedestrians perhaps? Rain? Fog? Lets not forget burnt chips or typical auto maintenance issues. And if you are in a car on autopilot and it crashes into someone or thing, are you responsible? Is the manufacturer?

For significant civilian use in the US, I'd give it 30 years, minimum. Other countries, maybe less. Some may not have the pre-existing infrastructure or have more "control" so to speak. For DARPA's stated goal, I'd say 10 or less for military applications, safety isn't goal #1 in that field.

Of course then there are stories like this

quotes like

"...This sounds outlandish, but no less outlandish than the notion that humans could be trusted behind a wheel to begin with..."

"...The problem is that everything that makes us human also conspires to make us horrible drivers. We are emotional, easily distracted and too often just downright stupid..."

make my skin crawl. Basic notion, other people are stupid, so you are now restricted from doing something. Unfortunately once such "logic" is applied to a common activity like driving, only a matter of time before such "common sense" is applied to other matters.

Deny hiding in any environment and cultural background;
  Provide persistent situational awareness and rapid strike;
  Beat the OODA (observe-orient-decide-act) loop of modern adversaries;
  Provide cyber operations dominance;
  Remove the value of using biological weapons;
  Increase survival from life-threatening wounds;
  Restore injured warfighters to the way they were; and
  Develop core technologies that maintain U.S. military superiority.

This sounds similar to what DARPA's EMPiRe project is doing.

Link to the original 7.2007 funding announcement WORD doc directly from DARPA...

Gotta' get going on that marine turtle study grant before they give that one away to someone looking to make soup...darn!

Wasted? Have you gone through all the budgets to see where the money went? No new tech advances are being developed with any of that money, right? It's being 100% wasted, right?

Lemme reword that for you in your language: Bahhh? Bahhh bah bahhh? Bahhhhh? Bahhh?

That might be a while; they're too busy trying to perfect the Iron Curtain from C&C: Red Alert.

No, I'm not dissin' DARPA, I just don't know of/haven't seen in the new an intended DOD effort that nearly-IMMEDIATELY spun off into commercial success.

umm...you're using it, dude.

DARPA isn't in the business of churning out commercial 'toys'. Medicine, aircraft, autonomous vehicles...all much longer range ideas. Stroll through their current list of projects. Some very interesting things.

Yeah, totally. Oh wait, the DOD funded the development of the Internet, advanced wireless communications, GPS, tons of medical advances, and numerous other projects that you probably benefit from. It's not all death and destruction you know. Personally, I'm happier to see the advancements in medical treatment than I am the pretty pictures.

The race is important, but not in the way you claimed.

Intelligent vehicle research has been going on for years, and the US Dept. of Transportation funded autonomous vehicle research years ago that culminated in a vehicle that drove 97% of the way across the US using autonomous road following. There is a lot more to do, but many of the outstanding are legal, related to liability and infrastructure (as noted). (Reserved lanes for robot cars? Who takes the blame when one crashes?)

This challenge encouraged and accelerated ongoing research, but I bet the effects on road fatalities are very small for a long time. More immediate effects will be on urban combat and luxury vehicles, and on the development of interesting component technologies. There are pictures and a few cost figures at this site, and a
forum for
participants here