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."

Comments

Sounds dangerous

[El]

Isn't anybody concerned about autonoumous vehicles running over spectators? "Hey, I thought it was a rock." I certainly wouldn't trust my life to a DARPA visual recognition system.

Screw flying cars

[Michael Crutcher]

.. what I really want is for everyone to have self driving cars. It's really much more efficient to roll a weight across a smooth path than it is to fly it over the same path. I'd like to be laying back on my couch in my car going 200.

That would be cool.

Just like a video game

[BagOBones]

You ever wonder if video game developers haven't already solved many of the AI issues in terms of driving?

The real problem would be getting the track information in real time and telling the AI what each object is.

Then again I am sure game developers get to cut a bunch of corners because the AI knows the track perfectly because it is a part of its system.

Re:Just like a video game

[mrseigen]

There are probably lots of game hackers trying to use the best of the best in pathfinding algorithms. It'll be interesting to see if what the game industry has been using for years actually does keep a speeding vehicle from getting embedded in rocks, children, and sandstone walls.

Re:Further applications

[kfg]

Traction control is old hat. On an electric vehicle which uses a seperate motor to drive each wheel (the ideal setup, eliminating most of the drive train and making a differential totally redundant)it's actually not even that difficult. A few sensors and some computer logic to moderate the electricity to each motor, providing a specified amount of torque at each corner.

Pretty sweet setup really. Too bad about the whole battery thingy.

What might surprise you though is that Ford is already not only already testing totally autonomous vehicles, but they're at such an advanced state they're doing so on public roads in heavy traffic. So far they're doing just fine.

It's kind of odd to watch someone sitting in the "driver's" seat, and not driving.

And no upgrade to infrastructure needed, as was posited in the "old days" (guide wires under the roads and such). Advances in computer, feedback and sensor technology have made all that sort of thingy obsolete.

So maybe in the future your fridge will not only call up your grocer when you're out of milk, your car will go get it for you while you sleep.

I'm not sure about being able to train my cat to go out to the car and bring it in though. I'll have to trade her in on an Aibo or something.

KFG

Re:Who Do You Want to Shoot Today?

[cK-Gunslinger]

but 90% of it's about killing people, making nuclear war more practical, or causing other kinds of evil and terrorism,

Oh come on! What kind of crap is this? Perhaps you've heard of that little DARPA creation called the INTARWEB?! =P

No one wants to make nuclear war 'practical.' 90% of research is about NOT killing people, as killing a lot of people typically doesn't help win wars. This isn't the middle ages where you can hope to wipe out an entire society in a single war. What DARPA is interested in is destroying *targets* - things like launchers, tanks, fighters, satellite links, etc. Successful live tests are those that *minimize* casualties, not maximize them. We've had the technology to maximize death for decades now.

Re:A Real Change

[khenson]

You know... You're right. And reading your article I was getting more and more riled up about removing YET another right to the few things I actually enjoy on this planet - driving.

But the more I think about it the more I like the idea of having alternative transportation for those deemed "incapable" of driving a vehicle.

This way you would have to earn the right to actually control the vehicle you drive. We could test drivers like other countries do - inclement weather condition tests, obstacle tests, reaction tests, vehicle control skill measurements, etc.

I have raced professionally (mostly dirt track) and I can tell you that many people who have licenses shouldn't be allowed to drive a vacuum cleaner.

This actually make a wonderful solution...

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Join Team Overbot - no pay, some risk, big prize

[Animats]

That's one of the best articles I've seen on this event.

I run one of the Grand Challenge teams, Team Overbot. We have a vehicle (a modified six wheel drive Polaris Ranger), a shop in Redwood City, funding, equipment, and people. We're well along; the vehicle has most of its actuators and some of the sensors working, and about a third of the software is running. We're one of the five DARPA-accepted teams.

Many of us are Stanford alumni or students, but this is not a Stanford project.

• We need three more good programmers in Silicon Valley. "No pay, some risk, a fraction of the prize." If you're interested, we want to see 1000 lines of C++ you're proud of. You'll need to put in at least 250 hours between now and March. Click here to join.

Our basic technical approach is to build a rugged, reliable vehicle with conservative control strategies. Others may be faster, but we expect they'll get into trouble at high speed. Our top speed is 40MPH. The real problem with the Grand Challenge is not going fast on the easy parts; it's getting through the hard parts.

The 6WD chassis we're using is one of the most bump-tolerant platforms around. It can go over railroad ties at top speed without problems and without going airborne. The center of gravity is low. The front and mid axles have independent suspension; the rear axle is a swing arm. This simplifies low-level vehicle control. All wheels can be driven, although at higher speeds, we will switch from 6WD to 4WD.

We have five computers on board. Three are small PC/104 machines, and two are Pentium 4 machines. All run QNX (the OS for when it has to work.) All are industrial-strength ruggedized units. The actuators are all servomotors driven by industrial microcontrollers. All this hardware is off-the-shelf industrial control gear.

Sensors include LIDAR, doppler RADAR, sonars, cameras, INS, GPS, etc. Some of them are used in unusual ways. That's all I'll say about that.

The pathfinding strategy is indeed borrowed from video game technology. It's more structured than Brooks-type behavior based robotics, and it's less structured than Latoumbe-type planning. There are three layers of control; the top one we call the "back seat driver", because it has only advisory authority over the "driver".

We have road map and topo data onboard, but it's used more as a hint than as rigid guidance. We take the waypoints DARPA gives us (on a CD, at 0430 hrs the morning of the race) and load it in. There's no offline preplanning. Wouldn't help in the real world.

If nobody wins this year, which is quite likely, we'll be back next year with a faster vehicle.

Post questions and I'll answer them here.

John Nagle
Team Overbot