Another DARPA-Sponsored Robotics Competition

dexterpexter writes "While some say that DARPA played unfairly in eliminating Grand Challenge teams they deem unworthy, they, the Department of Defense, and General Motors (among others) sponsor an autonomous robotics competition in which they exercise less control over who competes and who does not. The rules are more lenient and the prizes are less illustrious, but this competition still holds the spirit of 'openness' and rewarding innovation that the Grand Challenge seems to have lost. Of course, you must be from a university to compete, but any university-based vehicle passing the competition-day qualifications gets a fair shot at winning. No pre-competition disqualifications. My team has competed for several years."

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Prizes, less illustrious ?!?!?!

[MajorDick]

Hell they can call those prizes ? I doubut first place $1500 would recoup the cost of batteries...
I didnt read enough, (I rarley do:) but many of these contests are nothing but brain suckers, like the X prise, unless theyve changed it you are basically sighning away your rights to the tech if you win, even that prise $10 mi, is a joke for the tech to CHEAPLY put someone into space, on the public market a cheap easy way would be worth billions.
What does DARPA have to loose, maybe 50k in all the prizes TOTAL ?
I mean competition is good, the best, but I have a feeling the comercialization of these technologies is much more valuable.
The sad part is frustrated people from the original competiton will see this a a boon and join to do nothing more than expose their innovations to someone that has the ability (read GM) to bring it to market.

Re:Prizes, less illustrious ?!?!?!

[dexterpexter]

You are absolutely right, the prizes do not recoup the losses, but since most research costs money, it is nice to offset the cost a bit. For most teams, this competition is a good deal. Since student time is free and many groups are heavily funded by outside organizations and their respective universities, and taking into consideration the fact that the rules stipulate that the students receive the reward money, not the university, the real thinkers on the project in a sense do get rewarded. With a $10,000 Grand Prize, distributed through our three team mates, that is a substantial amount of cash to students who would do it for free otherwise. I think that this competition is in the spirit of open source because students work and freely submit their work, detailed in technical papers, so that all can see the general idea of how their work was done, but in the case that the students have an especially good robot, they are rewarded financially for it. AND, all students get class credit for it, and I don't know too many university students who get paid to go to class.

It is true that the universities do tend to want to claim ownership of materials and property, but we get to take with us the learning we gained above and beyond our classmates. I know that this project has impressed two major players into offering me jobs upon graduation, so the reward of a potential job and marketability outweighs the small prizes.

You will also notice that the $1500 was for a single event. There are several ways of getting rewards. One team has won over $10,000, which goes straight to the students.

If we want to take what we learned and go apply that to future robots that we independently want to sale, then that is fine. DARPA cannot claim our technology. Only the university can. And they can't claim lessons learned.

And, as for the GM support, that is because they are working on autonomous vehicle lanes. They already have a test lane in Texas. :)

Pah!

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way you can get a decent, fair competition is to let anyone play and put it on TV...

Robot Wars!!!

No seriously, it's open to more than 'just universities' and it's (reasonably) fun to watch. All it needs is a push away from simple remote control vehicles into something more automated (i.e. robotics) and some sponsorship. I know I'd watch more episodes if they let you use projectile, beam and electronic weapons. Sure safety shouldn't be compromised, but there's gotta be a way to let people be just a bit more adventurous than building a wedge shape round an RC car?

I mean, let's be honest - Lego Mindstorms is more robotic than Robot Wars. A proper Robot Wars could eventually yield some useful technology through having fun...

Universities only?

[musingmelpomene]

I wonder if anyone's thought about the fact that many of America's most talented, creative young people - and many of its most technologically gifted - aren't in college.

Many see it as a waste of time and money that could be better spent creating a business, or working on their pet project.

Why should this sort of competition be limited only to those who are conventional enough to find a home in the traditional university setting?

Re:Universities only?

[dexterpexter]

That is true. I have no illusions, and I doubt do the competition sponsors, that college students are the most innovative in the country. The purpose of the competition, I believe, is to give those university students who are working on robotics anyways a chance to compete said robots against each other and to show what students (i.e., not big companies with lots of money) with little experience can do. It is also helping cultivate a new generation of engineers. I don't think its an exclusion based on believing that university students are better than anyone. But pitting three unexperienced university students against Boeing (not because of $$--well, it is a little bit about the money--but it is the engineering experience that will get you) would counterbalance the competition a bit.

Basically, they found a fun way to teach and DARPA and other sponsors saw what the students were able to produce and decided to reward them for it. What a way to learn! Instead of sitting in a classroom sleeping, we get to work toward something great, learning through experience, and we have a chance at getting paid to do so. Neat.

This is just one robotics competition. Another poster has mentioned one that is open to EVERYONE in which the money prize is much, much higher. You are welcome to compete in that if you wish. :)

Delivering what .EDU isn't

[Mr_KnowItAll]

As one of the accepted entrants in the DARPA Grand Challenge, I interpreted the "original" challenge as an opportunity to advance practical AUV technology by breaking with the traditional grant-based funding of research institutions. Each approach has its place, but putting the prize money at the end of the route seems to motivate teams rather effectively. I think it's fair to presume that the Grand Challenge was/is motivated by a desire to get more for the taxpayer's buck than research grants have been achieving.

From DARPA's own statement...

"The purpose of the challenge is to leverage American ingenuity to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicle technologies that can be applied to military requirements."

The recent events that have led to the outcry about the fairness of DARPA's management of this contest are truly unfortunate. I'm actually concerned about the viability of this and future Grand Challenges based simply on the number of legitimate complaints that could be brought that may delay the prize award. Yesterday on DARPA's forum a team reported that the "secret" route that was to be announced only two hours before the start of the race had been "leaked" to some teams. If it's legitimate, for teams using a human pre-planning strategy it's a substantial advantage, and thus it's unfair.

When anything in the Grand Challenge is described as unfair, what's really being said is that there may actually be an attempt to defraud the American taxpayer via an unjust award of a million dollars. People go to prison for much less! I think that the organizers did not adequately consider the implications of running a contest such as this, particularly since they (the US Government) is held to a much higher standard of fairness than any private contest organizers.

-sf

Re:Delivering what .EDU isn't

[jackb_guppy]

Then why not pull your team, and force DARPA hand?

Otherwise to me, you are now a co-defendent went this all hits the fan. Basiclly, now the Grand Challenge has be come fixed lottery.

I keep wanting...

[Hogwash McFly]

I keep wanting to enter my robot into competitions, but it keeps saying that it can't let me do that.

Regards,

Dave

I'll bite

[qedigital]

I've competed in the last three IGVCs and plan on being there again this summer. Until the announcement of the DARPA Grand Challenge (and the subsequent IRRF spinoff), the IGVC was really the only choice for land-based autonomous robotic competition. While the problems presented by this competition are challenging and tend to get more difficult each year, the 'only game in town' mentality is reflected in the way that the whole competition is organized. The venue and activities have remained relatively unchanged (albeit when the competition is held in Orlando in conjunction with the AUVSI Robotics Symposium) . Going on experiences at a variety of other North American engineering competitions, one would expect boasting prominent sponsors and judges from the likes of GM, Ford, and the US DOD TACOM that some industry tours and media attention would be organized. With teams spending thousands of dollars and travelling great distances to participate, such things would bring even more meaning to this important competition.

In terms of the actual IGVC events, it's important to note that they are heavily software based. Very little emphasis is placed on mechanical design or aesthetics and for this reason entrants have actually submitted milk crate and plywood based vehicles and other such contraptions that have zero real-world utility.

The meat of the IGVC is in the Autonomous Challenge. It consists of an obstacle course that the robot must navigate without leaving a defined lane or displacing an obstacle. This event has yet to be completed by a robot since it was overhauled a few years ago and made much more difficult with increased complexity and the introduction of a variety of traps.

This post is not intended to put down the IGVC or its competitors. The competition is an excellent way of getting some academic experience in the field of autonomous robotics without the enormous time and dollar committment of something like the DARPA Grand Challenge. At the same time it is important to recognize that there is room for improvement at the IGVC and that other competitions should be encouraged as this field matures.

Re:With what they pulled last time...

[qedigital]

2 reasons:
1. The IGVC has been around since 1993.
2. DARPA is by no means the main sponsor. The competition is held by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (http://auvsi.org) that also hosts an air and underwater competition in addition to the this ground event.

Re:Robots?

[Quirk]

Dave? Would you like to hear me sing a song Dave? It's one of the first things I learnt.

Re:I'm involved with these sorts of things

[Animats]

The above post is a forgery. There have been several such forgeries in recent days. There is no "Jim Stevens" associated with Team Overbot.

I offer a $100 reward for the identity (full name and address) of the person responsible for the above posting. If you have such information, please call Team Overbot at (650) 326-3529. Thank you.

John Nagle
Team Overbot

I did this

[gr8_phk]

Some friends and I entered the 2nd IGVC and took 2nd place. We used an old electric wheelchair frame, a PC, an old-style camcorder mounted on a tripod clamped down on the base, a big battery, some old Kodak sonars, and a cheapo power inverter to run the PC. Oh, and some homebrew software. You'd be amazed how many teams are still struggling with basic issues right up to competition day. The amount of re-learning is incredible, just about every team has ground-loop issues at some point in development. The cost these days is certainly = the prize if your thrifty (laptop + webcam + some controllable motors). I still stop by when I can, as this competition is always fun to watch.

The Rest of the Sorry Story

[TravisTHose]

I am the lead engineer of the team 'R Junk Works'. Our paper was submitted and approved by DARPA for the Grand Challenge. They then put us in the'Partially Acceptable' category just after approval. This was no big deal for us as we had our prototype vehicle already built for testing. Their 'Site Visit' seemed like just another hoop to jump through before entering the race. The only three people on our team have worked at the 'Lockheed Martin Skunk Works', so our little group is the spin offs - or the 'Junk Works'. We are also in Palmdale California. The four site visitors/inspectors arrived at my garage on the 5th of December to inspect our progress. They road around in our test vehicle that had integrated DGPS, INU and Vision systems running under LINUX Fedora Core 1.0 installed in my personal 1998 Toyota Tacoma pickup truck. They let it slip that this was a 'first for them' to be riding around in one of the contestant vehicles. They road around in the desert next to my house here in Palmdale along a pre programmed course that took them down dirt desert roads and washes here in the Mojave Desert - only a few mile away from where they are going to have the actual race. They had other inspectors jump in front of our vehicle and watched how it avoided them by driving around them. They watched with amazement as our vehicle raced along in excess of 35 mph across the rutty desert roads. Almost everything worked perfectly for the demo except our main vision system camera had been damaged the day before and we were using our backup camera that was having intermittent problems, but did not take away from the totality of the demo. It was probably one of the best demos I have ever given in my entire professional life. I could tell, if I could summarize their attitude of the demo, it would be that they were amazed, enthused and eating out of our hands when it was over. They also let it somewhat slip that we were the farthest along that they had seen yet! Well, after the demo, we assumed that it was inevitable that we would be selected for one of the six slots left. No joy ? they called us on December 17th (my birthday) and told us that we were not selected to participate. The reason we gave was that we did not as yet have a race vehicle. This was their own doing, as once our vehicle sponsor got wind that we were not 'Totally Acceptable', they backed out and were waiting for our team to be on the 'Totally Acceptable' list before donating the actual race vehicle. We even supplied statements of sponsorship from that sponsor = they obviously did not read them = OR = perhaps there was another incentive. After talking to a guy called 'Dan' who is the editor of a national magazine and good friend of mine, he also went to the 'Kick Off' for the Grand Challenge that DARPA had in LA last year. He was able to 'Liquor Up' one of the DARPA legal reps, and SHE intimated that the reason they were holding the Grand Challenge was to put the fear of god into their current contractor and show that they could go else ware for technical projects. She also said that it had already achieved this goal and that even if the GC was never to happen, that they would have already achieved this philosophical goal. Anyway, I admit, what I have said is but the ranting of a sour disgruntled looser. But now, you know 'The rest of the story' from my tainted eyes.