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

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: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.

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