Autonomous Robots' Desert Race

celady writes: "From KurzweilAI.net, apparently DARPA, the main research and development center for the department of defense, is going to fund an all-terrain robot race . The robots will race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas completely without human intervention. This could prove useful in the battlefield someday. DARPA really has some interesting projects going on. This one is BORING compared to the Vortex Combustor and the Chip-Size Atomic Clock. Watch the DARPA site for updates."

Comments

fear and loathing

[joe_bruin]

We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of uppers, downers, laughers, screamers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What's up?

[IvyMike]

No wonder there have been a lot fewer spelling mistakes in the past few days...robots use spellchecking.

no biggie

[Nobley]

This may have been an exciting challenge to watch before GPS came to be comonplace, but with the aid of GPS such a challenge seems a little routine to me, perhaps some entrant will choose to be suprisingly creative however and entertain us all.

Re:no biggie

[qedigital]

Granted, GPS would be an integral component of mapping and directional navigation. However, a competiting robot would have to dynamically respond to its surroundings (other robots, terrain, unforeseen obstacles) as well as be capable of tasks such as refueling (as the article suggests).

The challenge presented by this competition is enormous. The combination of speed, AI, ruggedness, and endurance is exciting as it hasn't really been seen outside military applications.

It's also great to see that some real money is likely to be fronted and should therefore attract some high-profile organizations as well as some interesting ideas. Competitions are one of the best ways to promote development by outlining clear goals, bringing like-minded people together to exchange ideas, and gain public media support for often obscure topics.

Re:no biggie

[DNS-and-BIND]

The race is rather boring, as a technical achievement. After all, the Global Hawk, a 737-sized robot jet, has already set a record by flying 8600 miles in 22 hours from California to South Australia.

I can get from west LA to Vegas in 4 hours over land...

Re:no biggie

[susano_otter]

I don't know if it really is easier to fly than drive; but we've had practical autopilots for over 50 years now. If driving were that easy, where's our robot cars, buses, trains, &c.?

Wierd

[Anonymous Coward]

in 48 hours we get:

Autonomous submarine competition.

Autonomous race car competition, funded by the National Semiconductors.

Autonomous hostess/conventiongoing robot in competition.

CMU buying land to test variable-terrain navigating robots.

And now another autonomous race car competition, but this one variable-terrain and funded by DARPA.

Is it robot day or something?

Re:Wierd

[mshiltonj]

Is it robot day or something?

Maybe slashdot needs a "Robot" topic? The topic is getting incredibly interesting now. In just a few few year, we may have autonomous, social, biped androids doing lots of interesting things.

I've said it before: All I want is a house robot that will vaccuum, do the dishes, get the paper, bring me a beer, etc. It plug itself into an outlet to charge itself when not in use.

And make biscuits. ;-)

A finite environment, with finite tasks. When is GE going to bring that good thing to life?

desert, v. tr. : to abandon

[cascino]

Autonomous Robots Desert Race
They're armed, dangerous, and on the loose!

could prove useful

[Anonymous Coward]

The robots will race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas completely without human intervention. This could prove useful in the battlefield someday.

So LA finally declared war in Las Vegas? Guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.

"without human intervention."

[tcd004]

without human intervention.

But what will burt reynolds do?

read the EXTREME worst case scenario guidebook

tcd004

Re:Vortex Challenges

[Sivar]

Actually, funding is almost always a challenge in the government. That they fund so many, many projects and agencies is what makes them spend so much.

AI Si, People No???

[DrewK]

There used to be an annual race like this that ended in 1989 I believe when parts of the area became National Park. So the Machines already have more rights than us Citizens?

Re:AI Si, People No???

[thumbtack]

It was called Barstow to Vegas. They even made a movie about it in 1971 with called "On Any Sunday" in whcih Steve McQueen participates. Even Life Magazine covered it.

A Million Dollars....

[ispepalocacoc]

Offering a million dollars is one way to encourage people to make scientific advancements, but that will never compare to a global disaster.

If for some reason Earth was going to become uninhabitable scientists would have us living on the moon in no time.

More than meets the eyes....

[Kirby-meister]

"Autonomous bots, transform!"

Autonomous Multi-Tasking

[Kaz Riprock]

Now...imagine if one robot was built to race down the streets of San Francisco to the harbor where it transforms into a submarine to dive to LA where it jumps to all-terrain mode to roll on to Vegas. It then has the sociability to roll into the casino and receive its award without bumping into the race officials.

Now that would be a cool slashdot story...

...Oh, and it's gotta be able to beat Toro in Battlebots on Treasure Island on its way home.

1 mil? Hell, let's get together a Slashdot team!

[silentbozo]

Who else wants together to field a robot? We'll cobble it out of junkyard parts, load linux on it, strap it into CowboyNeal's car and turn it loose. Hell, at least it'll be a great excuse to go to Las Vegas...

The Vortex looks interesting?

[gazbo]

From the project page:

Top Technical Challenges

• Start, throttling, shutdown, and restart
• Sustained operations

So, in other words, their main problems are starting it, controlling it, stopping it, and keeping it running in the meantime. No doubt we can expect a prototype soon.

Very useful indeed!

[QuantumFTL]

The robots will race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas completely without human intervention. This could prove useful in the battlefield someday.

Yes, when our battle robots stumble upon Canada's massive Mecha army in World War Three, they will have to be able to run away very fast!

Second Variety, anyone?

[Observer]

"This could prove useful in the battlefield someday."

(Shudder) This is the sort of comment that gives me the creeps. At least with humans there's the chance that you can eventually reason with your opponents . But autonomous robots? You might as well try to negotiate with a land mine - "hey, dude, the war's over, mind if I walk through there now?"

See the Phil K. Dick story referred to in the title, or the film "Screamers" that was based on it.

--
Come back, Ned Ludd, the world needs you.

Hmm,

[Moderation abuser]

Little bottle of helium, a gass tight envelope, a GPS, some solar cells, battery, couple of motors, computer to control it ...

Something much like:

http://www.robotgroup.org/projects/blimphst.html

Oh sorry, is that cheating?

Make it Fly

[msheppard]

Build a RC plane (they have these)
Hook up a GPS (they have these)
Hook up the gyro controlled auto pilot (they have these, yes, for RC planes)
Punch in the Co-Ords, and launch it.

I guess maybe solar powered electric might be best so you don't have to carry around a lot of feul.

M@

CMU Robotics

[imadork]

When I was at CMU I knew a few people in the Robotics department. I know that at the time they were working on the problem of how to get a computer to drive a car by itself. AI, Machine vision, recognizing the lines painted on the road -- all that good stuff. I know that they ran all sorts of experiments with computers driving actual cars, but with human drivers as a backup.

I heard a story while I was there (that was never really confirmed) that on one trip, they decided to ditch the human driver in the car, and see how well the machine could do on its own. (They followed behind it in another car, IIRC, and probably had some remote-control apparatus as well, I'd imagine.) They got from Pittsburgh to just outside DC, at which point a Virginia Cop pulled the car over -- only because it didn't have a driver!

Can anyone currently at CMU confirm whether this is true? I've always wondered about that.

Re:CMU Robotics

[homer_ca]

Driving seems simple because we do it all the time, but there's an enourmous amount of visual processing going on. I can imagine one of the more difficult problems is distinguishing obstacles. There's shadows (not an obstacle at all), soft obstacles like plastic bags and water puddles, and hard obstacles like mattresses, boulders, other cars, pedestrians. There are subtle visual cues that require common sense and real life knowledge, i.e. cloudy day or no tall objects on side of road = no shadows.

off-road? What about on-ground?

[Andy Dodd]

Does it have to be a ground/water-only robot?

If it can fly, everything becomes simple.

One person already pointed out combining a GPS with an R/C plane - Maybe that would work, although there's the issue of landing - The "finish line" may not have room allow a glide-in landing.

Put a GPS and a computer in a chopper, though... Someone had a link to an open-source helicopter autopilot project a few robotics articles ago.

*CRUNCH* -oops

[Dynedain]

I hope they avoid the LA freeways. I-15 between SoCal and Vegas is also one of the busiest roads in the country.

But seriously, if a autonomous neurological-network-enabled quadropod such as a cat, dog, or squirrel can't navigate the freeways, I don't expect a robot to.

enforcement?

[Tablizer]

Will robocops hand out robotickets?

Seriously, the road to Vegas is a ticket trap. It seems California wants to get some revunue before people spend it all in Vegas.

Machine Shop Mega-Wars.

[phriedom]

This sounds perfect for TV. Granted, a mil is a bunch of money to me, but it seems like DARPA could sell the TV rights to this event for more than that, and therefore give a bigger prize and attract more effort from competitors. Plus they would be getting good video documentation of the performance of the competitors as a bonus. I think they could do that without making significant concessions in the rules or whatever to the TV people.