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. :)

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?

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

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