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Desert Robot Race Update, With Video

Posted by timothy on from the mmm-mpeg dept.

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."

5 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting project which can save some lives by Pvt_Waldo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Interesting project which can save some lives by Skyshadow · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Or you could have it roll into a network of caves and shoot the people inside without exposing your own guys to risk.

      Or you could send it over to an enemy location and transmit a "bomb me" signal to the smart bombs to hit.

      Or you could have it crawl in and set fire to a compound where a bunch of religious extremists are held up.

      Or you could use it to wait in a ditch for a month until the car of a political leader rolls by and blow it up.

      These aren't all necessarily *bad* things -- it's always been reality that we kill each other, sometimes with good reason. But it *is* another step away from the old days when you'd have to risk your own life to kill another person, which IMO makes it a lot easier to do.

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    2. Re:Interesting project which can save some lives by dreadnougat · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or you could use trained monkeys to do the same thing. This accomplishes two things: 1) Saves lives by clearing out dangerous landmine and other unexploded ordinance. 2) Pisses off PETA Well I don't know about you, but I'm off to kill a cute animal to make into a bag.

  2. CNET had a story on this a while back by tessaiga · · Score: 5, Informative

    News.com covered the Grand Challenge a while back in one of their articles. Gives a more viewer-friendly overview of what it's all about than DARPA's site.

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  3. i think i will enter by kdb003 · · Score: 5, Funny

    i will simply program it to set off an emp.
    that should spice things up