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Preparing for the DARPA Autonomous Vehicle Challenge
Little Hamster writes "Post-gazette.com has an interesting article on the DARPA funded 200-mile autonomous vehicle race across the California-Nevada desert. They interviewed teams from two of the early favourites, Carnegie Mellon University and the California Institute of Technology. The teams talked about challenges on driving at high speed over a combination of roads, rough terrain and brush-covered desert, where the robot would need to consider how fast it can make a turn, the possibility of spinning tires and the potential to become airborne when hitting bumps."
And if the source code that runs the thing ever goes public, then the vehicle gets remarkably easier to target, given another computer and a detailed topomap of the area.
This is really cool.. technology like this could be used in consumer cars to reduce rollover/tire spin/etc. Maybe even 'smart' cars that drive themselves, leaving the human passengers free to sleep or get work done.
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...to know that you are posting via a transport (the Internet) that was sponsored by the same group.
But some of it ends up benefiting the masses as well - like that little thing called the 'internet' that you used to post that comment detracting DARPA, for one ;)
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The first posters here don't have a clue as to the effects and circumstances of this. The purpose is not Autonomous Kill Vehicles though it might occur. Cruise Missiles etc already do this as does the Predator to one degree or another. The purpose here is to reduce the overhead cost on the army dramatically in hauling supplies etc over long distances with or without roads. To do this you need vehicles than can bypass disabled vehicles and overcome obstacles. They need to be free of drivers who get tired and eat up supplies.
The real effect here will be civilian. The project which like it or not will happen regardless of DARPA someday soon, is going to very nearly completely alter how we live.
To illustrate: suppose you are old blind and unable to drive. (It happens to the best of us) Now you will be able to go where you want without somebody driving you. Suppose you want to go to work but don't want to own a car? Mass Transit? No! you just get on your cell phone and call for a car. It arrives shortly and takes you where you want to go and without a driver. Freight? No more Truck Drivers and the wreaks from them being too tired. No more Taxi Drivers. Close most of the Hospitals because wreaks are not filling them up. Kids will not need parents to drive them somewhere.
There is very nearly nothing more profound than this race! It will reorganize our world. The issue here is how will we adapt. This isn't an esoteric question. We had better face it now.
For the Luddites amung us, give it up. Stopping DARPA will only give the technological edge to China. They will do the work. This is a very high amplification Technology. It Amplifies People a LOT. The issue as always will be the morals of those being Amplified, and will we allow this to cause others to be lost in the "noise."
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
How do you determine if there is an object, or it is just mud on the camera?
Short answer: Saccades.
Longer answer: Put a motor on your camera that allows limited angular motion. Put teflon-coated plexiglass in front of the camera (probably with a wiper). Saccade. Check angular parallax.
Alternative Answer: Dual cameras.
How do you detect dust and filter that out?
Do horrible things to shadow elimination code.
How do you detect a fence - the links are generally too small to be picked up on the camera until you are very close.
See if you can find a digital camera vendor that will let you hack their firmware. Take 5mpix scans, have the camera output regions with consistent high frequency high contrast shifts.
Much better is to do what people do, and look for the posts between fences.
I don't think reflectance will be helpful for this.
How do you detect water?
I do think reflectance will be helpful for this.
A bigger problem is that people are trying to do way too much with GPS...GPS ultimately says what _was_. Using GPS to avoid driving into a lake is a good way to drown.
Is there a mandatory minimum size for the cars?
--Dan
Well, it will always be "easy" for a computer to figure out the 'optimal' path through terrain. (of course, by "easy" I mean "NP-hard", but a computer could figure out the best easily-findable paths that another computer would probably use)
This gets into game theory, i.e. choosing certain sub-optimal paths in order to reduce 'predictability'.
If you're using simulated annealing or genetic algorithms to find a path, then you will probably be pretty unpredictable already, wether or not someone else has the source code.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Going 30MPH, rather than 15MPH, over 20 miles of tough terrain, gains 60 minutes. (90 minutes vs 30 minutes).
That's why rough-terrain performance is more important than flatland performance.
The Polaris Ranger has a thick ABS plastic skid plate over the whole bottom of the vehicle.
But this isn't about the vehicle. It's a software and sensor problem. What's really needed to do this well is better laser rangefinders. They're coming.
John Nagle
Team Overbot