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DARPA Grand Challenge Kicks Off March 13th
GillBates0 writes "A quick reminder that the DARPA Grand Challenge is due to kick off March 13, the coming Saturday." He points to this "quick recap of the teams participating in the event," as well as details about the available satellite feeds. "The Atlanta-Journal Constitution is running a story about the event today. Quoting Frank Dellaert, co-director of Georgia Tech's robotics lab from the article, 'I would have trouble driving some of these roads myself. I think it's beyond the capabilities of autonomous vehicles today.' (shameless school plug). We'll see if the participants can prove him wrong."
Iphtashu Fitz adds a link to the New York Times' coverage of the trans-Mojave race, whose participants include "among other things a seriously tricked out motorcycle. The race is being run by the Pentagon, who is offering a $1 million prize to the builders of the first robot to successfully navigate a 200 mile route across the desert. ... a blog on ScienceBlog about the race has just started as well."
See the original comment, dated October 23, 2003, here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=83384&cid=7297 464
Parent is an unoriginal plagarist. Mod down.
All vehicles will be monitored by DARPA. I saw a story about it on Next@CNN yesterday that talked about the race.
Btw, next sunday's episode of the show will have more coverage of the race and the results. Should be fun to watch.
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article:
And some fear that, at speeds that might reach 50 mph, the robots also pose a threat to the desert tortoise --- a federally threatened species and the official state reptile of California. Sluggish after a winter of hibernation, the tortoises usually emerge from their burrows this time of year.
Under orders from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, teams of biologists will sweep the race corridor before the competition, moving any tortoises out of harm's way and fencing their burrows until the robots pass.
The tortoises, which have resided in the Mojave for 60 million years and, as individuals, often live to be 100, probably won't pay much mind.
At least two other teams have formally dropped out, and we expect some no-shows.
CMU is the favorite. Fifty people, $3.4 million spent to date, direct support from aerospace companies, and a team leader who expects people to work all night, day after day. (Read the article in the current Scientific American.) But their technology is rather disappointing. The whole route is preplanned by hand, using a bunch of people at workstations in a big trailer with maps obtained by overflying the route with LIDAR-equipped reconnaissance aircraft. It's not very autonomous. They found a loophole in the rules and exploited it very effectively. There's no breakthrough there.
Anthony Lewandosky, with his self-balancing motorcycle, has the most innovative technology. We've met him, and are impressed.
Palos Verdes High School has a viable entry, using a Honda Acura. We've loaned them some hardware. They've had autonomous driving working for months. They started by having handicapped driving control actuators put into a car, which simplified their mechanical problems. They debugged using a golf cart. Very nice work.
Caltech tried to qualify today, but their vehicle made an unexpected turn and bumped into something. They get a second chance on Wednesday.
Most likely, no one will finish. Nobody has really done enough field testing yet.
John Nagle
The robots have to follow a predefined route or they are remotely deactivated; I assume that DARPA has chosen a route that doesn't go through environmentally-sensitive areas.
If they have to route through this, then all I can say is "good luck"...
Some parts are off road, thus you need to navigate around rocks, hills/gullies, potholes etc etc etc. Here are some previous generation stuff that the Robotics Institute at CMU has done over the las 20 years, many of which involve autonomous highway driving, but driving off road is much harder as you cant follow any lane markers and you need to determine the best path so you don't flip over.
Total attendance was probably arround 350-450 people. I think there were about 50 people that attended that were not associated in any way to the race.
Vehicle inspections were performed on several vehicles the morning of the first day. The inspectors were verifying functionality of safety devices including the e-stop buttons, remote e-stop, beacon, and the alarm.
The qualifying and demonstration (Q&D) of several vehicles was done in the near 90 degree heat of the afternoon. The test course was composed of an approximately 1/4 mile serpentine track outlined by short penguines (orange cones). It consisted of about 50 GPS waypoints Obstacles included a sand pit, two gate openings, and two abandoned cars.
The biggest event of the day was the events that didn't happen.
I don't believe the first team, Team Phantasm appeared at the test track for Q&D. If they did appear at the start line of the Q&D course, they did not move.
The second team for Q&D was the Lousiana State CajunBot. The vehicle moved about 1 foot and stopped short of hitting the elevated start line ribbon. According to a CajunBot team member, a DARPA representitive was confused by the vehicle dwelling for 30 seconds before starting and erroneously pressed the remote e-stop while the vehicle was still behind the start line.
The ASI/Florida state vehicle did not move at all.
Team Caltech had the first vehicle to pass the start line. It completed about 3/4 of the course. It was out of view when it stopped moving and I don't know if it was e-stopped or if it malfunctioned and stopped on it's own.
I don't believe the A.I. Motorvators team appeared on the track.
Team D.A.D did not move at all
I don't recall seeing the Golem Group appear at the track; however, I was loosing interest by this time.
The Palos Verdes High School team had a brand new, well polished $40,000 Acura SUV. It would have won 1st prize in a beauty contest. The vehicle passed the start line and immediately went off course and killed two penguins. It drove parallel to a concrete barrier, dwelled for about a minute, turned it's wheels towards the barrier and did a face plant. That was an impressive demonstration from a high school team.
ASI/Florida State was given a second chance to qualify. The second verse was the same as the first... It just sat there. Bummer!
Tomorrow I'll don some SPF 50 to prevent any more sun burning, attempt to acquire either a pit or press pass so I can take note of the technology visible on each vehicle, and hope that at least one team is able to qualify.