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...

Comments

I think it comes down to...

[HappyCitizen]

Which one will be least elaborite. I mean, yes you need some complexity, but the less things that can go wrong the better. I like the sound of a self balancing motorcycle myself, but I bet the simplest will have a better chance at winning.

Re:rover

[TheWart]

As little as I know about the Mars Rover, unless I mistaken, I think the guys and gals at Nasa have the final say over where the rover goes.
In this case, the teams cannot aif their creation in any way. 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, whereas the people in the Darpa thing cannot do that.

Re:rover

[Cyno01]

Yeah, but since it doesn't have to be tested and shielded like NASA spec hardware does, a similar system based on more modern hardware could probably handle input at a faster rate.

what will sink this

[plinius]

It's one thing when a soldier dies because his equipment fails, but I predict that when the first pedestrian gets run over by one of the "robotic" cars the company that makes them will get sued up the wazoo and rightfully taken to the cleaners. Computers should not be everywhere.

Re:what will sink this

[KrispyKringle]

Point being that while robotic cars may in fact be safer, the incidents that would get the press would be the rare accidents. Remember when airbags were becoming common, and you started to hear about airbag related fatalities? People reacted as if airbags were inherently unsafe, even though this was patently untrue.

For that matter, I read recently about a study done by a couple of psychologists in which they described to schoolchildren about accidents in which seatbelts saved lives, and then about ones in which they caused injuries. The children, after hearing about the first, said, ``oh, then you should wear your seatbelt always.'' After hearing about the latter, they said the opposite. When asked repeatedly by the researcher, ``so, when should you wear it and when shouldn't you?'', one subject replied, ``well, I guess you should wear the seatbelt half the time.''

People aren't rational; one theory is that we interpret probabilities by ``representativeness'', a heuristic in which the situation being judged is compared to a similar situation thought to be probable or frequently heard of. So the more people hear about robotic-automobile-caused deaths (which would certainly be more publicised than the same old same old), they'd assume such vehicles are less-safe than traditional cars.

Many people judge the risk of very rare, unlikely deaths (from rare diseases, freak accidents, and the like) to be far higher than they are, while they judge the risk of death from things like car accidents and other more normal causes to be significantly lower than it really is. This is because they hear about far more of the freak accident deaths--precisely because they are freak accidents--than the ordinary, normal deaths.

Of course, just as with airbags, after the breaking-in period, I think people would probably get used to it. And the economic demand, if great enough, would be enough incentive to let them on the road.

DARPA's usage of this technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Disappointed by the slow pace and facing a congressional mandate that one- third of all Army ground combat vehicles be unmanned by 2015, DARPA decided to kick-start the research by inviting any scientist, engineer or gearhead with an idea to give it a try.

I hope the participants realize that their technology is going to be used to blow the limbs off of children in the third world. I guess that's OK -- they are savages after all.

Re:DARPA's usage of this technology

[Zakabog]

Of course they know, it was on the rules of entry.

Anyway, sure accidents happen, but the sole purpose of these machines aren't to kill civilians. So you have a picture of a dismembered child, do you have any story saying "The army tested it's new X10 remote planes today by blowing the limbs off of small children"? Maybe the US army didn't even do that (well they might have, I mean it's not like it never happens) it's just some random picture with nothing describing what happened. When civilians are killed it's mainly human error, when you have a machine go into a town to find a target and destroy (and this probably won't happen for a LOOOOOOONG time) it'd be able to sort through civilians and the actual target much better than a human. These machines would be able to REDUCE the number of civilian casualties not increase.

Re:DARPA's usage of this technology

[BZ]

> a few small steps away from being armed with
> rocks and sling-shots.

First time I hear a T72 being described as a rock. And yes, these did see action, in case you missed it (if with little success, except against the Bradleys).

> But 10,000 civilians died

For comparison's sake, what are the civilian death figures for other hostile takeovers of countries with a population of about 20 million (say the non-Vichy part of France in World War II)?

> millions more are going to die because of
> Depleted Uranium poisoning.

Depleted uranium is chemically about as poisonous as most other heavy metals that would be used for ordnance (the metal of choice for amunition was lead before DU came along, and we all know how safe lead is).

But nice try to stir up fears by mentioning "uranium" How about pointing to a scientific study of DU toxicity (some have been done, by opponents of DU, even, and found what I have said above) instead of pointing to propaganda?

Re:DARPA's usage of this technology

[Idarubicin]

I hope the participants realize that their technology is going to be used to blow the limbs off of children in the third world. I guess that's OK -- they are savages after all.

I see a picture of a child missing a limb. Though emotionally charged, there's very little useful information.

The parent poster may be making an honest claim, and he may not. I note it was posted by an Anonymous Coward, which doesn't help. Could have been an unmanned vehicle that did it. Could have been a landmine, too. Might have been a US vehicle, might have been Chinese. Was this a grisly industrial accident? Horrifying though the thought may be--was the child armed?

Context, please? It seems to be an awfully tenuous link to autonomous vehicles...

All we have here is a picture that suggests that military conflicts are bloody, grisly, destructive things, with wretched consequences. Well, duh. We knew that.

Thought experiment: Can the use of unmanned vehicles reduce this type of civilian casualty? Expendible vehicles might be less likely to be used to shoot innocent civilians, because they're not going to be frightened, or have an itchy trigger finger. Just a thought.

One possible alternate perspective: this sort of technology will further the perspective that war is a sort of video game--one that can be entered into more readily if there are no (ahem) friendly lives at risk. Just a thought.

Re:DARPA's usage of this technology

[vandan]

For comparison's sake, what are the civilian death figures for other hostile takeovers of countries with a population of about 20 million (say the non-Vichy part of France in World War II)?

You can't excuse yourself from killing 10,000 people by pointing to another point in history where you killed 2,000,000 people. Instead of getting away with the 10,000, you are in fact now being held responsible for both .

But nice try to stir up fears by mentioning "uranium" How about pointing to a scientific study of DU toxicity (some have been done, by opponents of DU, even, and found what I have said above) instead of pointing to propaganda?

Oh god. Not another 'nice try ... but where are the facts' post. If you were actually interested in the topic and had a mind open enough to allow some truth in occasionally, you would do a google search and find out more for yourself. You didn't do that, did you? It sounds like you'd rather beat the pro-American military drum, no matter how far down the path to hell they decide to march.

Go America! Dickheads.

self balancing moto...

[narkotix]

training wheels anyone?

short on details

[Squeezer]

I wish the article said how they were making the pickup be autonomous. Are they running linux and wrote some sort of hazard avoidance program, etc?

Re:Math is good

[cbreaker]

But if you plan on winning, you probably want to make it in before the last second.

Re:another contest

[DavittJPotter]

So I can assume you'll be out there, in your little booties, trampling the very same flora and fauna? And while you dismantle these vehicles, how do you plan on cleaning up the fuel you'll spill while breaking fuel lines? Brake fluid?

It's called Tread Lightly. Not everyone who enjoys off-road activity trashes the environment, dude. The responsible ones travel well-known trails, and we pack out what we pack in.

Re:another contest

[0x0d0a]

A coyote digging a couple of holes is going to probably displace more topsoil than these few vehicles.

If you *really* want to do something, go after the hordes of people driving SUVs and not carpooling. The air pollution emitted by these does a lot more damage than some faint tire tracks.