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Still More on the DARPA Grand Challenge
The SF Chronicle has an in-depth story on the DARPA Grand Challenge, with emphasis on the several teams from the San Francisco area. The three teams covered are using a pickup truck, a six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle, and a self-balancing motorcycle...
Which of these three doesn't belong?
a pickup truck,
a six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle,
and a self-balancing motorcycle
Esoteric reference.
no VW van?
*insert joke about how blue screen of death will be literal here*
Do you think I could enter with a beat up buick and a brick on the accelerator?
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so if that pickup truck had come from texas instead of SF would it have it's own computer controlled fully autonomous gun turret too?
Maybe the ESA built Beagle with input from the British motor industry....
Leave the vechicle unlocked in a bad part of Barstow with the keys, a pile of Vegas casino chips and case of booze in the car.
If no one watches the car, I predict at least 50% chance that it with disappear from Barstow and reappear in Vegas. (Or in a ditch on the way there.)
Cannonball run. For robots. Cool.
The article mentions things like your rental car showing up from the airport all by itself, which I admit would be quite cool. It also makes me wonder about the first collision between two autonomous vehicles on a public highway. Would the programmers get the tickets? Lots more interesting questions to be answered when these things start selling...
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
As a lover of the desert and card carrying member of Earth First, I thought I'd point out another contest that happens to be occurring on the same day. Its called "Bag the Unmanned Vehicle". Contestants compete to disable unmanned vehicles trashing desert flora and fauna for fun and prizes.
=-+
Of course the simple solution would be to give a monkey a quad bike. But don't give him a full-blown road vehicle, or he will turn it into a V8 intercepter and conquer the post-apocolyptic wasteland...
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
So in Nasa's case, an engineer might say that the rover is getting to close to a rock, and the team will stear it away
Yeah, plus they have a week of meetings, planning sessions, etc. to decide whether the rock is really an obstacle worth diverting around or not.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Vehicles must cross 200 miles of rugged terrain between Barstow and Las Vegas
Sweet Jesus! That's bat country. I suppose the poor bastards will figure that out soon enough.
?
No, it was a true pan-European effort:
Italian looks, French engines and British electrical systems, with German price tags.
Now with a little stabilisation, and the Rising Sun emblazoned on the tank, I can just see hordes of kamikaze Gold Wings descending on the enemy and crushing them to death with their armchair seats, or maybe using the included stereo as an acoustic weapon...
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!