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."

Comments

so you telling me .... $$$

[Quadfreak0]

So anyone planning on hi-jackin... uh I mean borrowing some equipment thats just rolling around the desert? Nobody is physically standing there watching right?

Re:so you telling me .... $$$

[ethx1]

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.

Researchers are wrong

[tyrani]

They're looking in the wrong place. I see a half dozen idiots drive "autonomously" to work everyday while eating, reading the frickin news paper, shaving, applying make-up, etc.

Researchers should be looking to these people for the artificial intelligence that they need!

the real problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have trouble driving some of these roads myself

The real problem is that his turn signal is on for 150 of the miles and confuses all the autonomous vehicles.

Education

[gid13]

In vaguely related news, this Friday, my Eng Phys class (okay, not mine, I did it last year) is requiring the students to slalom autonomous vehicles around pylons of arbitrary position (though powered devices are allowed on top).

As I said, I did the course last year (it was easier at the time), and let me tell you, it's harder than it looks. Hats off to anyone who even comes close to finishing this.

I was all excited until.....

[tyrani]

...I read the articles and found out that there would be no hack-saw blades nor pneumatically controlled spike hammers.

Now that would be an autonomous vehicle I'd pay to see.

The Real Purpose Of This Contest

[Rhett]

Is to prove to the pentagon that terrorists with a million dollars in funding can't build this.

Unfortunately, no one will will this contest.

Re:The Real Purpose Of This Contest

[Neo-Rio-101]

More likely is that they want other people to research how to build a future battledroid to capable of military-level spy/front-line army work... capable of survivng desert conditions for a given number of miles.

Red vs. Blue

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Team: "Muahaha! Bow before the greatest CS school in the universe and our giant Hummer that is smarter than you!"

Blue Team: "Feh! We can beat you with two wheels tied behind our backs!" *obscene gesture*

Red Team: "Come a little closer and say that."

Whatever happened to the wilderness areas?

[Whatsmynickname]

How will these robots be routed around wilderness areas generated by the California Wilderness Protection Act?

Wasn't the Barstow to Vegas motorcycle race cancelled due to declaration of these same wilderness areas? How is DARPA ensuring these vehicles aren't going to run over some tortoise?

Dont' get me wrong, as I'm no tree-hugger. However, it seems the Wilderness protection act only applies to people who cannot afford a congressman...

Re:Whatever happened to the wilderness areas?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Whatever happened to the wilderness areas?

[Wesley Felter]

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.

The ultimate RC car

[daemonc]

I want one of these for Christmas, damnit! You could run over your neighbor's house with that mo fo...

Current status?

[Animats]

We (Team Overbot) dropped out over a month ago. We couldn't deliver a safe vehicle in time. Two of us are flying down tomorrow to watch.

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 favorite?

[Innominate Milquetoa]

So how does the favored team train for a 210 mile race through the Mojave Desert?? Why, by testing it in the SNOW of course!

Entries too complicated?

[evilviper]

Is it just me, or are these entries too complex?

I admit I haven't made anything like this (although I've made some very advanced machines before) but it seems to me that a half-dozen laser range-finders connected to a laptop would do just nicely.

You could tell how far you were from the left/right of the road, and how far in-front of you an obsticle or change in terrain is (and can slow-down appropriately).

I suppose you'd also have to throw-in a $200 GPS reciever, since they have a "course", and you'll need to do more than just follow the road. But that seems to be all you'd need to accomplish this (yes I'm glossing over the basics, because they're just the basics).

So please, find fault in my idea. I'd like to know why this $5000 solution wouldn't work, and why 3+ million is required.

Re:Entries too complicated?

[Paul Komarek]

I don't think you're going to get six good laser rangefinders for $5000. I don't remember the numbers as well as I would like, but I think the current favorite rangefinders (I think the brand is SIC?) are well over $1000 each. And you will quickly exhaust your laptop's computational power just denoising the output from crappy sensors. Heck, maybe even for the best sensors.

Autonomous vehicles have already driven across the country on highways, 98.2% of the time without human intervention. The roads it drove on are (I'm guessing) likely to be much nicer than those in the desert. Furthermore there was a human available to handle the surprises. For humor value: I believe one of the self-driving vechicles from CMU has a learner's permit from the state of Pennsylvania. See No Hands Across America for more info on this project.

The hard part of any project like this is uncertainty in the environment. The road may "disappear" completly from your sensors, or you may spot multiple roads. Maybe some mica on a rock screws up your rangefinder. Maybe your vehcicle's transmission gets a little "funny" and you can't shift properly anymore (I saw such a comment attached to this article). And we aren't even talking about genuine malfunctions like a failing rangefinder or sticky throttle.

I think autonomous systems might be the best example of the best laid plans of mice and men not succeeding when the slightest thing goes wrong. In fact, Steinbeck's story seems directly analgous to the problems of self-driving vehicles.

-Paul Komarek

Why no news?

[SiliconEntity]

I'm disappointed that there is not more information available about this event as it happens. I've been following it vicariously for months, and now I'd like to hear about what is happening at the speedway in Fontana. How many teams showed up? How many tried out today? Which passed, which failed? I haven't been able to find out any of that information.

The so-called Science Blog article was from February 10! That's not exactly timely, is it?

Nagle's later posting here does present some information about Caltech. The Caltech team web page provides the same basic info, with a little different spin. But I guess we're lucky they posted today; the previous entry on the team's news page was dated November 16, 2003.

CMU has been updating almost every day, but their last entry was Saturday, saying "The curtain goes up Monday morning". Again, what happened?

You'd think in this age of bloggers, when every windbag on the net sees fit to tell us what he had for lunch that day, someone would be watching this event and posting some updates in the evening. If this isn't happening, I beg anyone who is attending to step up and start writing! Maybe I'm spoiled by the usual instant access to information, but I'm passionately interested in this event and starving for news.