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Teach A Robot To Drive, Win A Million Bucks
An Anonymous Reader writes "DARPA has released the details of a 'Grand Challenge,' with a $1 million prize. The challenge is to build an autonomous vehicle which can 'navigate on its own over a 250-mile desert course in less than 10 hours.' from L.A. to Vegas, 'without external communication or human control.' The contest is to be conducted in March 2004, and is open to all comers. Can we get at least one entry to represent slashdot?" We've mentioned this contest a few times before: any intended entrants out there want to disclose your secret plans?
All you need is to hook up a camerea up do an artificial neural net and spend a couple hours teaching/progamming it to steer and throw in a cpu and run a rule based system with a well defined set of rules(for navigation,traffic laws, etc) and we're set. Piece of cake.
Its very annoying being a researcher with moral objections. DARPA is offering $40mil towards asynchronous research. Our research group is one of the best in the area but after discussing the situation we decided not to to take the money. Most of the group (including me) don't really want to do military research. One of the projects most suited to the group would be making some processors for missiles and I definately wouldnt be happy about that.
There is the case that we could do a pure research project for them. No direct link with weapons but simply making tools to make asynchronous processors but we may be blocked from publishing research and still (more indirectly) killing people.
I never though that in computers you would have to think so hard about what money and projects to accept but this is one I would skip. Its obveous that DARPA want some long range seeking technology but they want good engineers (ones who wouldnt work for them directly) to do their work and warm them over in the pretence that its a fun game. I can't think of many engineers who wouldn't want to have a go at this challenge.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
The robot ideally needs to be able to navigate without fear of being stuck on a 2" pebble 100' from the starting line. Obviously you can't map 250 miles of terrain down to millimeter resolution, but you can design the robot to render such obstacles nonexistant.
One concept is a large inflated sphere with light tread patches on the outside. The power/electronics pack is suspended inside with cables running to various points on the sphere. By adjusting the lengths of the cables, the sphere can shift the center of gravity and roll forward. A 6 to 10 foot sphere would allow most small obstacles to be avoided, then the robot only needs to note current position and the general surrounding topography.
Major difficulties with this concept are high winds (unless they are blowing in the right direction!) and steep uphill gradients.
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3.1 Team Must Be U.S. Entity
The Challenge is open only to US entities. This includes U.S. corporations, U.S. non-profit organizations, U.S. universities, U.S. citizens, sole proprietors that are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and partnerships of U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
It seems a lot of slashdot folk here don't read before they post. Some are already talking about avoiding other vehicles on the road. First off, do you really think they would allow a bunch of robotic vehicles to drive along side drivers? Second, it does mention across the desert both off and on road, but does not say anything about public roads where it must avoid other vehicles.
Another thing mentioned was GPS. Someone complained about not being able to use GPS. If that person had done some reading (FAQ on the page) then they would have seen that a public GPS or a private autonomous GPS receiver is allowed.
Now my thoughts on this challenge.
A few things I think are most important here are:
4x4 type of vehicle (truck, SUV, Hummer, Jeep, etc.) (Automatic prefered for ease of use)
A must have GPS receiver.
Infrared obstacle detection device (180 degrees) about 100 meters.
Also, another device to analyze the terrain about 180 degrees around the front of the vehicle out to about 100 meters.
Attach the GPS, obstacle device, and terrain device to a computer and also have the computer hooked up to the acceleration pedal, brake pedal, and shifter to put into park or drive.
The terrain device would be the most complicated. Then all you would need is a few good programmers that can work with the data the different devices provide and your set. I'm not sure if such terrain devices exist outside the military, but I'm sure some laser/infrared/etc. engineers out there could produce a basic one. This project isn't as complicated as it sounds, but it would take some good engineers and programmers to finish. Just my thoughts.
Question everything.
According to the article:
Examples of obstacles include ditches, open water, rocks, underpasses, and construction. All obstructions on the route can be either accommodated or avoided by a commercial 4X4 pick-up truck.
Anyone that has gone offroad can attest to how hard it is to go 25mph consistently or on average. Add in to that the fact that you will have to backtrack and figure out alternate routes means your vehicle is going to be thinking fast and driving very fast.
The article mentions part of the route will be on paved roads, so maybe you can make up a lot of time on those stretches.
Definitely not a trivial challenge. but a fun one for sure. Some of the non-trivial ingredients: the offroad vehicle, gps for detecting way points and finish points, camera for detecting obstacles and terrain, algorithm to determine fastest speed for current terrain, feedback to determine whether you are getting close to tip over, algorithm for determining alternate routes.
what else?
G'morning all.
:)
:) Radio stations make for decent markers too. Since you have something the size of a truck, it would be a piece of cake to triangulate distance and direction to any one becon, and use any two to fix location.
:)
This sounds like fun.. Personally, I don't have *ALL* the skills required to pull this one off, but if anyone's forming a team in the Los Angeles area, I'm in.. I have skills everywhere from the technical aspects of making a vehicle work to engineering of the hardware involved.
I'm thinking something like a slightly modified S-10 Blazer, or K5 Blazer. Positraction (not available on the older S-10's) is a must. Probably the K5 would be the better choice, for extra room in the engine compartment for controls.
I did a quick read through their forums. There's some interesting (and optimistic) talk of stereo vision through, laser vision/guidance, and ground evaluation through radar.. A few of the people sound like they have a clue, and some others didn't even read the rules..
Some of them are talking about exotic hardware solutions, that they'll probably spend all the available time building, and then wonder why they don't have a working vehicle to go with it. Some others were talking about cool Xeon based systems, and forget that they get hot, and this is going to be running in a vehicle in the desert for 10 hours. One mentioned the hardships of hard drives, and doesn't even realize that you can use Compact Flash as your hard drive, and do stuff from there. No one yet mentioned using Linux..
My thoughs on a practical vehicle is a late 80's Chevy K5 blazer. Radar (like the backup radar in late model Lincoln's) to evaluate for local blockages. Vision system, like a stereo camera hooked up to a Linux box (this is where I'm at a loss. I don't think I could do this software).
Steering control would be an electric motor with chain drive just before the steering box. That way, no major changes to the steering need to be done.
Acceleration is a simple motor pulling on the throttle assembly, just like the vacuume accuator on cruise control.
Braking would need to be something more substantial. probably a pneumatic ram on the brake pedal lever itself.
I'd suspect it'll take a few computers to run it, but in something the size of a K5 blazer, we'd have no only room to mount it, but more than enough room to mount it preventing shocks... The computers would need to be hard-drive free though.. Compact flash cards of say 512Mb would be just about all we'd have to work with. That should be sufficent though.
The site says they're providing several checkpoints which are mandatory to pass through/stop at. There will also be mandatory waypoints, which define the path. Fairly easily, go from waypoint to waypoint. If there's an obstical, decide for left or right turn to go around.. More than likely the easiest thing would be to use GPS to establish a location (when available), and use other public navigation beacons the rest of the time.
Anyone who's flown knows how many radio navigation beacons are available.
When you detect an obstical, mark it on an onboard map, and figure out a way around. That would be for big obsticals like canyons or mountains. Small obsticals, you steer around.
I can design and build anything required to make the vehicle itself work. Navigation will be up to someone else. This is/will be a team project, so as many hands as we can get involved would be cool.
Can we get Cmdr Taco's permission to put "Slashdot" down the side of the truck?
Who's in? Reply here first, then we'll get in contact in real life.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I have on good authority that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a huge lead over most competition. They already have autonomous vehicles that can travel at ~15 mph over very rough terrain. Keep your eyes out for the Caltech/JPL team to make some real waves.