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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?
dislose? Does that mean find them?
Just make it really really big, with treads, and a huge freaking mulcher on the front. Then, just let it travel in a straight line from LA to Vegas. Crushing everything in its path!
Can we teach the humans to, as well?
but just pointing an old car in the right direction with the steering wheel and accelarator jammed would have a small chance of victory. It would make a lot more sense than playing the lottery, and on the off chance that it did work, it would piss off DARPA no end.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
I plan to build a 250-mile-long car.
If someone from Slashdot enters a vehicle, it should definitely be named "Autonomous Coward." :)
The challenge here is real-time processing of vision data to handle obstacle avoidance, etc.
;)
They say that you can use "public navigation signals. So a GPS (and backup) receiver, along with a Digital Elevation Map of the area would be half the battle. But real-time stereoscopic vision is a bitch. The nice thing is that you can fit a whole lot of computing power into a medium sized car.
I suspect another big problem will be colliding with other bot cars... I'm thinking about running a Ford Pinto, which due to the placement of it's gas tank, will explode on impact. At least that away the other robot cars will FEAR mine and stay away
-JE
"You're always going to have problems moving a body in one piece" -- Brick Top
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.
...
The rules also state that the route will be navigable/avoidable by a standard 4x4 pickup (HINT HINT).
Having driven out in the desert, even on the dirt roads, most of it can be driven at 60+ mph. You just have to be ready for the parts that can't be driven faster than 5 mph.
Brought to you by: "Al"toids - the curiously weird mint.
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.
You're just looking at the problem all wrong.
You're not providing the guidance so the missle kills someone, you're providing the guidance so the missle DOESN'T kill all the doctors and patients in the hospital next door to the target.
paintball
Lemme guess, you'd also like to slam DARPA for builing that blasted ARPAnet? I mean, what good ever came of that?
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
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.
From the FAQ...
Q11. Can I use differential global positioning system (GPS)?
A11. The challenge vehicle is free to use publicly available signals. This includes differential GPS receivers in towns or counties along the way. A team may establish a private differential GPS receiver, as long as it is fully autonomous, at a checkpoint.
... it must be the touring test.
Infuriate left and right