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Will There Be A Winning Autonomous Robot in 2005?
An anonymous reader submits "This summer is heating up the
DARPA Grand Challenge as multiple top notch schools begin to announce their
entry into the competition. The newest organization to announce its entry was
the
Florida Institute of Technology. Their project is known as
Oasis - Autonomous Racing, and they have a team of over 45 students,
professors, and advisors that are currently hard at work designing their vehicle
and raising funds to pay for it. The DARPA Grand Challenge is a race between
vehicles that should be designed to travel up to 300 miles in less than 10 hours
through the desert or other harsh medium without any human interaction. The
2005 competition has a $2 million grand prize as authorized by congress. With
all of the new entrants does anyone think that the competition will be won the
second time around?"
Well, considering that the best performer for this year didn't even make 15 miles, I'm hopeful that someone will actually complete the course, but not in under 10 hours.
Now, where did I leave those keys to the bunker?
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
No.
I don't think anyone will win this time around. The problem is that the current technology can't deal with unknown situations/objects, maybe in a controlled enviroment with selected things added and removed but in a desert there is very little chance. If someone does win it will be more down to luck than actual computing power.
But is a year a great enough span of time for teams to overhaul their entries?
It is not like the teams were only miles from finishing the race: most teams couldn't even handle a few hundred yards.
and it'll be my team! I was in the Challenge this year, there was some pretty hot stuff out there.
Of course, with all these pesky 'competitors' we're going to have to work harder this year.
Do you have to pay taxes on the $2mil?
The whole point of the race is to see how well non-government groups solve these problems and to gain new insight on how to use technology.
Just getting something that works makes them winners.
but what are the odds in Vegas anyway?
"and through desert, swamp, or frozen tundras without any human interaction." from OASIS
"That being said, it is expected that most teams will modify existing off-road vehicles for the Challenge, although who knows what could slither or crawl across the starting line." question 5 answer from DARPA
I think OASIS are very smart to be thinking along the lines of hovercraft etc. It simplifies what the computer has to consider as "the ground". But does anyone know what kind of fuel/running times hovercraft have? 15 hours is the OASIS target.
I know we're going to hear mostly naysayers here, saying "Well, gee, they couldn't even make it 15 miles this year, what's the chance of anyone actually winning in a year's time!?"
I think there's a good possibility that someone can win it. Think about it. This past year, none of the teams had any first-hand, direct experience with this course or the challenge. So now every team has all of the experience and data from this year's challenge, and could not only see what went wrong with their team's entry, but the problems faced by every other team (motorcycle entry notwithstanding).
I think the computing power is there. If the teams learned anything from this year, it should be that GPS isn't sufficient in and of itself. You need to far more creative. Every system should have 2 or 3 redundant subsystems.
I think it can be done, and I think there are enough creative people working on the problem that it wouldn't surprise me to see a winner next year.
No. Last time a good 30%, I believe, didn't even make it out the gate. I seriously doubt any of them will "win". Well, I'm sure they're all winners, like in the special olympics, but i don't think they will FINISH the course.
If the prior entrants are any indication, than no. Those entrants shows just how unprepared they were. As a engineering student on a team that has built/is building an autonomous robot (not associated with DARPA), my evaluation of the vehicle designs left me terribly disappointed. In fact, part of me things my own team could have thrown our present navigation hardware/software onto an ATV and been more competitive than the other DARPA entrants. In fact, had DARPA not been so selective in their choosing of robots to enter the competition (which, in my opinion went against the spirit of an open competition), we might have done just that.
A few responders have said that the technology just isn't there for autonomous navigation. I disagree. It just needs to be refined. Robots for the IGVC can navigate unknown environments respectably, and these are unfunded, poorly staffed projects ran by undergraduate students.
I believe that the next competition's entrants will make it much further than this years, but looking at the stock, similar designs that DARPA let through, looking at bells and whistles rather than creativity, my hopes are not high for having a winner. They need to re-evaluate the meaning behind an "open" competition of ingenuity and consider that the most expensive, technologically-advanced robot is not always the answer.
Look at the first year IGVC. Colleges spent thousands of dollars on big, relatively the same robots and the University of Tulsa came in with a PC bungeed to a child's car and beat them all. I don't pretend that the IGVC robots are competitive against the Grand Challenge ones, but the point is still the same: make it an open competition, and perhaps we might see some *real* ingenuity and then, in the future, a winner.
Money d.n.e. ingenuity
That said, I tip my hat to the previous entrants. How neat is this competition!? (even with its limitations)
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"We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms."
According to the May issue of Wired, the best team got through only 7.4 of those 100 miles before breaking down. There are some funny quotes in the Wired article, showing just how miserably far away we are from true autonomy:
What went wrong: "Lost GPS signal. Forgot there was a mountain between it and next checkpoint. Tried to drive through mountain."
Lesson learned: "Go around mountains, not through them."
What went wrong: "Interpreted small bushes as enormous rocks and repeatedly backed away from them."
Lesson learned: "Get new sensors that can distinguish between bush and rock."
This all sounds pretty pathetic, but having just completed a master-level course in artificial intelligence, I suddenly understand just how difficult some of these issues are to solve. Let's face it: We won't see anything even approaching true autonomy in anything but tightly controlled environments for years to come.
I conclude with the best quote; not really AI-related, but still simply hilarious:
What went wrong: "On-off switch located on side of vehicle. Bumped into a wall on way out of start area. Turned self off."
Lesson learned: "Put the on-off switch somewhere else."
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
to hide a Little Person inside one of these things? Baron Kempelen got away with such a scheme for quite a while... The Turk
BTW, for all those interested, Wired ran a list of what went wrong for each team. It reads very comically, but a lot of these things are very "DUH!" after you've gone through the first time. I forsee a lot better results, as teams will have that much more practice. Hopefully some will come up with some more general solutions, rather than brute-force processing the terrain around the known area of the route.
You can't use a hover-craft, though. I am sure that is the first thing on *everyone's* mind. (I know it was mine)... why not just build a helicopter and make it take the most direct route? There is a reason no one did that:
The rules limit entrants to mechanical-to-ground travel. No hover crafts allowed.
However, there are other non-DARPA competition where flying autonomous bots are preferable. DARPA's competition, however, is limited to road vehicles.
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"We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms."
If they all run the race a the same time, just build one that locks on to the most expensive/fastest and follows it. Then in the last hundred meters (or at 5 rods and 7 chains distance) you take it out ben-hur style with spiked wheels and win the race. I reckon darpa would give you an extra million for dramatic effect.
I mean 142 miles, not 100. 142 is the number Wired quotes.
/. blurb mentions 300 miles, but the Q&A on the DARPA page says "will not exceed 300 miles". Apparently the course is randomly selected and only revealed on the race day, to make sure the vehicles aren't trained for the specific race course. I'm assuming the Wired quote means that the course that was picked for this 2004 challenge was 142 miles long.
The
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Watch a rally. Rally drivers have codrivers w/notes, and prior knowledge of the course...but I believe with Baja it's mostly seat of the pants; Paris-Dakar has got to be since it's so damn long, but I could be mistaken. They average well over 60mph on a course that's got to be much worse than anything DARPA came up with. Of course, they have astronomical component failure and driver error rates (as well as the occasional wildlife incident- one rally team hit a cow at well over 60mph, it was NOT pretty- I think they also got arrested, because it was a serious crime in the host country, akin to murder, to kill a cow), and at 60mph, rocks look like bushes and bushes like rocks, until it's way too late to do anything about it. Rally teams just bolt up more plating on the important stuff, and hope for the best.
What went wrong: "On-off switch located on side of vehicle. Bumped into a wall on way out of start area. Turned self off." Lesson learned: "Put the on-off switch somewhere else."
While not defending them, it was probably an emergency disconnect switch, which you do want to be highly accessible for those times when, say, it starts driving away (or towards something) and shouldn't have. Yes, DARPA required radio safety switches, but do you really want to trust your life to just a radio disconnect?
Honestly, some teams were just stupid in their use of money and priorities- I got a huge kick out the team that had a giant plasma display TV in the passenger side of the cabin. What the -fuck- was that for, watching the Superbowl while the car drives you to the next checkpoint?
Please help metamoderate.
The technology certainly does exist to achieve it. However from a project point of view the limits are the 2million and 1 year to do it.
If you were to have 3 to 5 years, 20 programmers, say 6 electronic engineers and a few mechnical engineers i think It would be rather easy. I dont mean grad students either, I mean people with 5 to 10 years and a few seniors from relevant fields. Of coarse this isnt going to happen for 2million and management of a team this size would require integration time of around at least3 to 5 years I would say. Identification of obsticals is not a problem, thats fairly ruitine software project-yes it requires the engineering approach there is always a way. Path generation is fairly ruitine. However the practical engineering issues are not expecially under budget and time frame. The second issue is breaking down the project into managable chunks for each person and that is where the project result would reflect the cleverness of the seniors.
greg
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waitress.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
is whether the winning robot will have a "CAPS LOCK" key.
all this; just so the cia can run over arabs without even having to use a remote.
We humans will remain useful as long as robots are stupid.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=96954&threshol d=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=8290 851
Name suggestion: The Autonomous Coward
... so I could build a vehicle that looks and seems real, but holds a "little person" in a hidden compartment.
:-)
Yes, in the end it would, of course, be disqualified, but think of the fun you'd have while it lasted. 100% accurate voice control anynone?
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
Motorcyles and the trophy trucks averaged nearly 60 MPH on the last Baja 1000, other classes are slower.
I wish Rally driving were more popular over here in the US of A, so much more excitement than big ovals.
Bleh!
I predict that this will finally be won by a Cat D6 (bulldozer) based vehicle. Drive through small things. Don't get caught up in barb-wire fences. A little GPS and some vision thing for detecting deep holes and you're there.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
CMU's approach is a big hammer. They took a stock line-scanning laser rangefinder and put it in a huge 3-axis gimbal, which they then actively stabilize. That should be able to profile terrain, but it's a huge mechanical kludge. If you miss a spot because you hit a bump, you have a hole in your data. At that point you can either slow down and rescan, or plow ahead blindly. They may eventually complete the course with that rig, but no way is it a commercially viable technology.
The next generation of sensor technology may be ready in time. There are at least three groups with usable sensors in the prototype stage. We're talking to two of them. But that's all I'm going to say for now.
John Nagle / Team Overbot.
(We're recruiting. See our jobs page. No pay, some risk, a fraction of the prize, we cover all expenses. Silicon Valley only. We have our own shop in an industrial park in Redwood City. If you're local, come over and see the thing.)
...the OSS community come up with an entry?
Do as much as possible in simulation, including physics modeling and damage. An excellent proof-of-concept.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
A balloon is a fine idea for slow-moving robots.
However, towing a balloon behind a robot that travels at an average 30 mph would present a problem.
For a demonstration:
Fill a balloon with helium and then try to run with it. Instead of staying afloat, it will sink.
Then there is another problem. Compressed air cartridges would only dispense AIR into the balloon.
You cannot simply fill a balloon with air and have it float. You would need something like helium.
But then, you still run into the issue of trying to manage a balloon at high speeds.
It would work if your strategy was to stop and then release the balloon, then retract it before resuming. Problem with this is that a balloon would be more subject to the wind (deserts are notorious for horrible winds), accidental tears in the bushes, and a lack of stability (what is to stop it from being blown to turn around in the opposite direction?)
A helicopter would offer steering power, and some thrust to counter what the wind is sending at you.
Overall, I think a small helicopter (or propelled aerial vehicle of some sort) would offer more stability.
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"We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms."
The only problem I could see with this is that driving through things was not seen as an acceptable solution by DARPA. It stipulated that the terrain and obstacles must be left unharmed. I think there are reasonable allowances made, such as running through "weeds" and leaving faint tire tracks.
Sending a bulldozer through something, however, would likely cause harm.
The motive behind this, if I get to guess, is that they are looking for a more covert vehicle. Something that has torn through the terrain and left chaos in its wake is more likely to be tracked/disabled than something that can quickly and nimbly navigate across the terrain.
I think that your idea is a fine idea, though. If they are looking at application for war situations and covert navigation is not an issue, I think that you are onto something.
When I first heard about the competition, that was my first reaction, too. Why not just create a tank and plow through the terrain along the most direct route? A review of the rules showed that they had already taken into consideration this solution and created a rule against it. I can see their reasoning, though.
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"We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms."
Do you guys think the teams lost primarily because of software or hardware issues, and if it was because of software issues, do you think it would be a viable strategy to make an open source project that would guide the vehicle? Would there be any way to maintain competition while still keeping code open? Would there be enough interest to keep the project alive?
100% accurate voice control anynone?
Assuming, of course, that your midget isn't deaf.
"Turn left!"
"What?"
"TURN LEFT!"
"WHAT?!"
"Don't shout at me, you're the one who can't hear me!"
"WHAT!?!"
**crunch**
Although if I had to choose between a deaf midget or a blind one, I guess I'd have to choose the one that can see what's coming.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
If they do something like this it will have a better chance of going through any annoying obstacles.
From what I know of the race course, these vehicles have to average 30 mph going cross-country through the desert. If it's anything like the terrain around the Tucson area, I'm not sure that I could average that without piling straight into a saguaro.
Microsoft delenda est!
I think the major problem of the past challenge is that no one looked into the possibilities of fuzzy thinking. Like the ability to assign threat levels to various levels in the terrain and picking the lowest threat level as the appropriate path to the goal. This is a simple enough project and why nobody was able to make it work I don't know. Perhaps it is the fact the project was not as open as it could have been or people thought the competition would be tougher than it was.
I think many lessons were learned but I doubt this one was even taken into account with the exception of one team who went down this road but I think they kind of missed the mark. This is of course arm chair quarterbacking which will undoubtedly be met with many excuses.
With all of the new entrants does anyone think that the competition will be won the second time around?
It will if they let *me* drive.
Version 1.0 might have perfectly accurate voice control, but Version 1.1 would be outsourced to India so wouldn't understand a fscking word you said.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual: of the mind
Property: that over which one has control
"Whining". If there will be a whining autonomous robot, I would like to officially announce my intention to protest. I get enough of this at home from my children.
DARPA won it the first time round. All these teams poured a ton of $$$$ into R&D and implementation and gave DARPA a whole ton of free ideas for building their own automanous vehicles.
--"It is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics."--
I wonder if this technique ever came to anything?
Here's the article.
I really like this sort of competition but I have a couple of concerns.
First, it's not open to everyone because you have to be an american citizen to enter (not 100% sure about this). If this is the case then the DARPA Challenge will not harness the full power that it was originally design for, which was to build the best possible intelligent robot for the task at hand. If you eliminate 95% of the worlds population from the competition then probably you've missed out on a good amount of innovation and ideas that could have helped your ultimate goal.
Second, should we the scientists of the world be helping the military build weapons. I know this is a cute rover type contest but if you mount a weapon on these puppies you've got a very scary scenario involving many innocent people getting killed or used and controlled (Terminator/Matrix movies). It isn't always a good idea to make something just because we can.
As with RoboCup, I expect the gap between the first and third years to be huge. And to think our little QuickCam/Linux RC cars won robocup #1.
Anm
re-inventing the wheel.
Why is it that engineering schools always seem to start from scratch every year?
Is it the NIH (not invented here) syndrome?
Why not find the best that exists right now, and use that as the starting point?
How will any progress be made if everyone starts from zero every year?
But while I'm interested in the beginning of that paragraph, and the end, I'm not gonna read what's in the middle.
The return key is your friend.
A lot of them didn't TRY to make it out of the gate, because they knew they were fundementally flawed.
Man, that was frustrating.
Because, for instance, the high school team which withdrew before the gate might have done as well as one of the well-funded company teams, since most of them went down and went down fast.
It would have been great to see them ALL publicly fail to make all the mistakes obvious and learn-from-able.
I thought that was a waste, and assume that some of the people who decided to withdraw felt the same way when they saw all the others fail.
If they really want to create an autonomous robot, let's see them make one that they can't get to come back.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Just what we need, whining automatons. Don't we have enough tech support problems already with whining users?
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Within the next few years we should be seeing some really interesting robots as the market drives higher amounts of storage for less money.
Imagine how much more you could do with 5 TB of space than with just 300 gigs all in the same amount of space. It will be very interesting to see.
You're nothing; like me.
That's kind of a silly statement. Perhaps I'll see YHBT. HAND. etc. after I post this, but evolution is a pretty undeniable process. We've forced bacteria evolution, just take a look at what happens when a stronger breed of strep survives antibiotic treatments. Or when we (humans) polluted the shit out of a birch forest in mid-1800's England, I believe it was there at least, the population of white moths plummeted, while black moths rose. What the hell do you call that? Magic? No, that's another forced evolution. If animal X is continuously eaten by predator Y, then only the best suited of animal X will get to breed, passing on only the best suited genes. Evilution my ass, evolution is what nature tends towards.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
This guy could have won the DARPA challenge.
r .rampage/index.html
All he'd need to do is point it in the right direction and put a brick on the accelerator.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Central/06/04/bulldoze
I know that you posted about the Special Olympics as a joke, but it really is a highly competitive arena. People train hard for amazing results there. There is a sense of everyone being winners for being there, but isn't that true for the International Olympics too?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Forgive me if this has already been addressed (I am obviously not an engineer or anybody capable of building a robot), but why not use some sort of sonar type way of viewing things, like bats do?
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
There's an article recapping the Grand Challenge in the latest IEEE Spectrum (sorry, hard-copy only). Among the interesting designs was a vehicle equipped with hydraulic "wings" to right itself if (when) it overturned. Another team found it better to disable their troublesome vision and radar systems, and just target the GPS waypoints.