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DARPA Announces Grand Challenge 2005
An anonymous reader writes "The Grand Challenge 2005 Date has been announced for October 8, 2005. Check out DARPA's official webpage for details. Already several teams from last year are gearing up: Carnegie Mellon Red Team, D.A.D., and Cal Tech. Also, several new teams are entering, among them Stanford, and Florida Tech. Should be a very interesting Challenge next year!"
"Should be a very interesting Challenge next year!" ...more so if anyone finishes
maybe this time someone will actually make it more than a few miles. Actually i expect someone will finish the whole race, but i do not know if they will finish it within the time requirements.
He say 1 and 1 and 1 is 3, got to be good lookin' cause hes so hard to see...
...the 2005 challenge will involve creating autonomous vehicles that can navigate one mile along a flat, empty highway with a clearly marked, solid center strip. The vehicles will have one week to navigate the course
This way to the egress...
This year: Make a robot that will successfully find a parking spot at the mall!
When's the contest going to be held to see who can build the smartest engineer?
the same spooks that want to identify terrorists by how they walk?
Jean Kumagai has a nice article (with pictures) on the 2004 race in this month's IEEE Spectrum Magazine
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
a big garage, a spare '67 IH Scout 800, a laptop I could trash, assorted robotics parts, and a month or two paid time off (or better yet- sponsored by my work)... I just *know* I could get out of the parking lot...
I've actually seen something very similar to this before, I believe that they should be able to actually do this. At a local college near me I watched as the robotics team ran their robot through an obstacle course by having it follow a nice little line using an optical sensor... So I think this challenge will be possible, although not easy to do for one mile. But even if noone actually does claim the prize and finish... it is the fact that you learn something from the experience and hopefully that experience can be put to good use that's important... isn't it?
...maybe we should be investing in making midgets, er umm, "little people" more immune to heat, radiation, etc. so that we can just have them drive the vehicles.
This way to the egress...
just build the machine itself to be relatively indestructable- handling any terrain. Say with four wheels large enough to be completely invertable and floatable. Then just add a GPS unit and skid steering, and some simple logic to try 4 times, then rotate 90 degrees, run for 100 feet, rotate back 90 degrees, and try again, recursively, plus seek out pregrogrammed destination co-ordinates. Make it go up to 60 MPH to make up time when it doesn't have any barriers to get around, and let it go. It might not take the straightest route, but it will get there eventually- kind of like my 1-year-old's bumble ball robot that has no brains at all, just a gyroscope and bumpers to keep it moving in random directions.
Even better yet- a huge bumble ball with GPS locator to tell us where it is- just drop it into ANY terrain, and it will bounce around until it gets where it wants to be.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
please.. insightful? thats clearly troll, stupid mods. and yea, THIS IS A FUCKING TROLL TOO, but feel free to mod me insightful.. dumbass'
The team that completes the Grand Challenge 2005 route within a specified time will receive a cash prize of $2 million, an increase from the $1 million prize offered at last year?s event.
In the first DARPA Grand Challenge, held on a desert route from California to Nevada, 15 teams from a field of 106 applicants progressed to the final event
Why increase the prize to $2M? If the goal of the challenge is to develop an autonomous vehicle, why not use the extra $1M as a grant to fund the top 15 teams from the last challenge.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
As a proud dropout of Florida Tech, I'd just like to point out that the "Florida Tech" link goes to an article about the University of Florida. If Florida Tech is competting, I wish them all the best luck. Here's the correct link to their website: www.fit.edu
This topic, although w/ slightly different wording has been chewed and swallowed/spat out couple of days ago...
Are non-American citizens allowed to participate? I tried looking at the Rules Page but it's not up yet. I don't recall if there was a stipulation which restricted participants to American citizens.
Given DARPA's great R&D track record in the past (Internet and what not), I would've liked to participate in the contest *purely* from a scientific curiousity point of view - and I bet a lot of nerds all over the world would like to overlook the fact that the contest is sponsored by a military agency (prize not withstanding - since it's US taxpayer money). Just as long as DARPA lives up to it's name and does not morph into OARPA - it's happened way too many times in the past.
Incidentally, the link to the official page is incorrect on that page. The site linked to in the article seems to be just a mirror of the darpa.mil site, however.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I can't wait to see all the new automated field medic designs. Wait, why does that one have a big gun sticking out of the top....
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Should be a very interesting Challenge next year!
:)
What is your evidence for this? This year, everyone looked promising but failed at the first hurdle. Nobody even got to the halfway point, and the whole thing was badly presented to the public as well. Anyway, lets hope things go better next year
Don't participate. Remember Total Information Awareness still exists.
I
Isn't this just open-country BattleBots?
The challenge is too hard to expect success in the near future. If they keep the same race format, these robots have to average 30 mph through undeveloped desert terrain in order to finish within the time limit. If the desert is anything like the ones I've been in, I'm not sure that I could do it without running into a mountain.
Microsoft delenda est!
america couldnt even win a punchup in a bar, let alone a war on terror or iraq
Read this older post. I think it speaks for itself. One wonders how many teams they will let in this time around? Or, is this going to be the same-old same-old?
Go beavers!
DARPA is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). The Agency manages and directs basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where the risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions.(emphasis mine)
This mission statement is important because it emphasizes that DARPA was specifically designed to fund research into hard problems. In fact, the catch-phrase "DARPA-hard problem" has surfaced as a shorthand way of labeling high-risk, high-payoff problems. A lot of people seem to be having fun laughing about the fact that none of the vehicles in this year's race came close to finishing. But as I pointed out above, that certainly doesn't make this contest a failure by any stretch of the imagination. This is a DARPA-hard problem. Certainly no private company is going to fund something like this. The risk is just too high. Really, DARPA is one of the few entities that has the resources to put on an annual contest like this.
From some of the comments posted here there seems to be the idea that because DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that we have to dislike them. I disagree. Sure, DARPA has future warfare in mind. But so many technologies developed for military use end up in the private sector anyhow. It would be pointless to list them all. Let's not look a gift-horse in the mouth. DARPA is willing to fund science and scientists are willing to work on their problems. I don't see what the problem is. Do you guys think that if scientists stop doing DARPA work that suddenly conflict in the world is going to stop and everyone is going to join hands and sing "We are the world"? Sometimes I think people complain just because the like to complain.
GMD
watch this
It's not a troll, you fuckwit mods, it's a shoutout.
That's the first thing I thought. Looks like another item to add to my Skynet HOWTO.
posted on slashdot . Scale up the Big Trak a touch, and you're in it.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Moderators, take note: parent is a fake, plagiarizing an old John Nagle/animats post, for the purpose of karma-pumping a troll account.
SATURDAY SATURDAY SATURDAY!!
just doesn't sound right.
I suppose this is offtopic for everyone else, but that is my 50th birthday and setting that date when I am trying to avoid thinking of my 49th is very very insensitive. 16 months off and they have to pick that date. No, I won't be there.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
woohoo!
Are you using an A* algorithm or something else?
Yawn.
Thats what Id try anyway. I'd fail miserably, but wouldnt building a mechanical cheetah b e lots of fun.
Mods - look for troll-bait inside of parent post.
> And plus, CmdrTaco is a huge, raving nutsack!
Mod parent down.
The Army reading list
As usual, I offer a $250 award for information regarding the identity of the person responsible. We can be reached at (650) 326-3529.
Considering the course and the results of the last race, what DARPA is really looking for is one of those fancy walking MINI Cooper robots that looks as though it stepped right out of the Transformers cartoons! Getting somebody to say as much in an official memo has been quite the challenge...
+++
I noticed. Some bozo keeps doing that.
Wow, how long did it take you to spot this? 30 seconds?
You need to get a fucking life, man.
In the meantime, I'll keep reposting your lame diatribe about your leet Team Fagbot every time Taco dupes the story.
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone use a modified Range Rover. They've been using these for god knows how long to navigate terrain in Africa on safaris and other ventures where there are 0 roads.
And another thing, stop putting a damn space in Caltech. Its 1 word when written like that.
Cornell University is going to use its Hybrid Electric Vehicle (http://hev.cornell.edu) as its own entry into DARPA. They want to kick Carnegie Mellon's butt. :)
We need a few good volunteers in Silicon Valley. No pay, some risk, long hours, we cover all the expenses. We're close to a working vehicle, as can be seen from the pictures on our web site.
What? Technology didn't help win the war in Iraq? Are you serious? Whether or not the war was just is debatable, but it wouldn't have been anywhere NEAR as clean and precise without GPS and laser-guided bombs etc etc.
"Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
This would be a much better challenge for John Carmack. He would have a much better chance of winning and no one can get killed.
Is there a reason that they don't hold the challenge(s) more ofter? It seems to me that this task is something that should be technically do-able. Also, it seems to me that good R&D work is done in sprints, rather than waterfall style development.
The government owns the land, right - so no cost there. These guys are funding themselves because the result of being successful will be to get recogniztion (and $$) from DARPA.
Why not do it more often?
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
I can't resist that first whiff of packed shit from my wang as I finish pounding Michael Sims in the ass.
Mod parent down.
First off, returning teams already have a foundation to build upon, both in existing hardware and in technical experience. Writing software for a race like this is almost impossible to do without testing it on a working vehicle (i.e. testing in simulation only works out major problems, but does not translate well to desert racing). For example, Caltech spent 6 months getting actuators and drivers to work well enough to hand over the vehicle to the software team. As soon as that happened, we noticed several problems interfacing the actuators to the software (e.g. updating actuator positions too fast locked them up and made them stop responding). Ultimately our vehicle was not even waypoint following accurately until late February. Most teams were in the same state we were in - racing the clock, plagued by bad hardware (sensors and actuators) and inexperience. BUT we were very close to being very good. If they re-ran the race mid-summer this year the results from all of the teams would be very different. Looking to next year, teams have working vehicles which means 1 full year of onsite testing instead of 2 months.
Another thing that is interesting about the next race is the timing relative to academic calendars. A lot of teams are university driven and it was very difficult for students to devote enough time to the project while still handling their school requirements (definitely true with a Caltech workload). The next race is at the very end of the summer which means that a crew can work on the vehicle full time for three months before the next race.
Whether or not someone wins the next race is entirely up to DARPA. By next year there will be 5+ teams that could navegate last-race's course in
Anyway, good luck to all teams...especially new teams - you have quite a hurdle in front of you. See you in 1 year.
Why is it that when I click on the link (titled: www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge) at the bottom of the page at http://www.grandchallenge.org/media.html I get a "page not found" error?
:-)
Is it incompetence on the part of the creator of that page or is it because I'm surfing from outside the USA and DARPA figure it's not a good idea for potential terrorists to see what's going on with this challenge?
If "Roomba" can do it, I have faith a full team of scientists and lots of money can make it happen too.
We have Won in Iraq.
The military and government of Saddam is defeated. In fact, as of a few minutes ago, the UN approved a resolution which establishes the sovereignty of the new Iraq government.
And Vietnam did not win by strapping 10lb of home made explosives to thier donkeys. They resisted our liberation because the soviet (nuclear armed) forces behind them prevented us from using overwhelming force.
-Jacob
As the article stated, Stanford University will be submitting an entry to the 2005 Grand Challenge. The webpage for the Stanford Racing Team is here, if you are interested in finding out more!
Based on what I see every day on my commute, it would be a tough enough challenge to have a manned vehicle complete this task.
Maybe if you would get off your goddamn phone you wouldn't be swerving into my lane!!
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
US Liberation! Talk about rewriting history. Vietnam was an independent country from 1428 until it was taken over by the French in 1861. After WW II, Ho Chi Minh attempted to become independent with Chinese backing and succeeded in driving the French out of the North. The anti-commie zealots forced the US into the war when it looked like the South would fall as well. In 1975 the country was liberated from foreign occupation and remains an independent country. Guess what, no domino effect, no world communist domination. And no Soviet involvement. What planet are you from?
i dont think you understand what winning is
go find a slot machine pump billions of cash into it and when all that comes out of it is dust and dead americans then tell me you have won
Like Friendly Fire? Marines shelling Marines? Helicopters colliding?
... immediate conscription into the U.S. Army, and a free trip (of indefinite stay) to Iraq!
In any case, I'd love to hear a worthy argument which negates the actual subject matter I'm writing about. Modding this down to "Troll" is simple avoidance and cowardice. I dare you to really think about this. (Of course, I'm not directing my words to those of you who already get it; I don't mean to include you in my vent. But there are fools aplenty who are clearly shying away from this subject who ought to bloody well know better.)
Still, in the end this is fine. The moderators who are apparently too horrified by the smell of reality to actually function beyond the knee-jerk must have their say as well, so this will be my third and final attempt to be useful; I'll not bother again. --If the majority really don't want to think about relevant, (albeit unpleasant) ideas, then who am I to force otherwise? Free choice, and all. . . (Though, I still find it a large personal challenge to maintain respect for the cowardly.)
Anyway, I added a couple of new thoughts this time around. .
The best option to cross the DARPA race track is to fit a GPS navigation system, linked with some sort of mechanical gear mounted on the back of a horse to pull the reins in right direction. The horse will need only directions, not precise maneuvers to clear obstacles. Yes, at the fuel stops, you will have to keep grass, and water.
Seriously, Auto industry is not interested in it, because the last two words of DARPA objectives are "Military Requirements". When you see the progress made by European Union's Smart Vehicles projects and manufacturers, you'll wonder why are the DARPA teams reinventing the wheel. Is it the classic "Not Invented here.." feeling at work?
Make the front end look like KITT (complete with fake scanner) and the back end look like Doc Brown's Delorean. Point it in the right direction and floor it.
Then rig it so when it hits 88 miles an hour, every seam lights up like a Christmas tree and start spewing sparks...
I don't pattern my thinking after television programs and movies.
As a result, I am able to write sentences which people can understand. Dude.
-FL
Here's an article with numerous details. Further reading on your own will enable you to make a reasonably accurate measure as to Tin-Foil-Hat quotient on this bit of 'raving'.
As for arguments, I'm not even sure what the actual subject matter you're writing about even is.
The subject matter is the DARPA challenge. My general position is that participation in the DARPA challenge is tantamount to applying for service in the military industrial establishment. This, considering what the American military stands for in the world today, should call for some serious thinking and soul searching on the part of the applicant.
-FL
I'm designing a fully autonomous Congressman who can cut the military's bloated corporate-welfare budget. It'll be 100% lobbyist proof!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Also, several new teams are entering, among them Stanford, and Florida Tech. Should be a very interesting Challenge next year!"
Its actually University of Florida and not Florida tech.
The people of Vietnam are still being oppressed by a totalitarian regime. They still try to escape. -Jacob
Who won WW1 and WW2? Did the US rake in the cash from those wars? No. But they acheived objectives. Everyone Claims that the US fights wars to take oil or other valuable things, but in fact we don't. However when we don't make a profit you call us losers. The objective was to shut down an oppressive and threatening government. That government is gone. We won. We are occupying Iraq. Winners occupy, losers are occupied. We will soon hand the country back to the people of Iraq. If we succeed in shutting down the terrorists and insurgents, the people of Iraq will win as well. -Jacob
Florida Tech will be submitting an entry; for more information visit www.oasis-racing.org