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Desert Robot Race Update, With Video
An anonymous reader writes "Several teams have moved forward with their bid to run the Barstow-Vegas Desert Robot Race (For those not familiar check out http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge ). As of today 55 teams are registered, some of the most interesting are Cal Tech, AI Magic, and the Red Team out of Carnegie Mellon. Also fishing around the Red Team site, there is a pretty nifty video."
One of the huge applications of autonomous vehicles is the removal of landmines. Systems that can scout out, identify, mark, and even remove mines could save the death and maiming of thousands every year.
Our poor earth is littered with millions of land mines left over from past conflicts, and from current ones too.
Don't knock technology like this. It can be used for good too. Even to clean up after the bad.
That red Jeep has nothing to do with the Grand Challenge. That's Navlab 11, the Robotics Institute's latest test vehicle. the Robotics Institute, headed by Charles Thorpe, took a look at the Grand Challenge and decided to pass. He told me "If we entered, we'd have to win", and since he's mostly Government-funded, he'd need another source of funding, which he didn't have. Whittaker, who heads a related but separate operation, the Field Robotics Center, decided to do it on his own.
Whittaker issues a constant stream of trival press releases, like Team Equipped with Laptops and Office Equipment. We have considerable respect for the Robotics Institute at CMU, but this is becoming embarassing.
We take Team Caltech seriously, but not Whittaker's operation.
We will give a presentation on September 24, in EE380 at Stanford, on how we're doing it, and will show our vehicle, which isn't vaporware.
John Nagle
Team Overbot
I would prefer it be very difficult to kill people in general. That way, we'd only do it when we really needed to.
Everyone prefers not to kill (except the murderous bastards). This is a straw-man position, and politically naive.
If you look at history, anytime one side was able to kill the other without having to really risk themselves, the shitty side of history results -- genocide, oppression, etc. Just because it's your side that happens to have the better guns, tech, germs or whatever doesn't mean it's a Good Thing.
No, if you look at history, shitty things happen all the time. There is evidence to the contrary: when forces are balanced, then only the tension builds, not the solution (eventually the tension breaks with very bad results: UK-DE before WWI, US-JP before WWII, UK-FR 100 years war, GR-Persia...). The only time peace occurs is when overwhelming force exists on one side (the benevolent side).
Hell, look at us: We've been way out ahead for, what, 20 years now and already we're invading other nations so our political leaders can distract the masses from economic problems or the fact that they can't stop terrorism (70% of Americans believe Iraq sponsored 9-11, and why not? They're ay-rabs, ain't they?).
How does political trolling like this get modded up to +5?
Anyhow, I understand that we live in reality and that these things happen. I just don't think that most geeks would want to be a part of it if they really thought it over, which is why I said what I did.
"Most geeks" is a spurious term. If you think they are all left-leaning pinkos, you`re wrong. If you think they`re Edvard Teller madmen, you`re wrong. Geeks are all over the spectrum. I would imagine there are some geeks who lost their brothers/fathers/sisters/mothers in 9-11, and would have no qualms in putting the hurt on some goat-farking terrorist camp via remote control.
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