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DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 Rules Announced

Posted by timothy on from the and-roll-tape dept.

Mr_KnowItAll writes "Our friends at DARPA have released the proposed rules for the 2005 Grand Challenge. They learned their lesson from the first one, now they will expect teams to submit a video demonstration of their vehicle's ability to complete the course before being invited to participate. Good, but they're also advancing the timeline to the point that it will be very hard to any team to start now and hope to participate. After all the fuss at DARPA's last-minute rule changes in '04, it's interesting to see that they're offering the proposed rules for community review and feedback."

6 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Are they doing this wrong? by l810c · · Score: 5, Insightful
    How about setting up a series of events?

    -Terrain navigation
    -Obstacle navigation
    -Other short races that highlight various systems and their proficiencies
    -An overall skill winner
    -And THEN the race

    Each of the teams would be able to see and learn from the other various technologies and make changes/improvements in the coming years.

    This thing was just a joke this year with many of the vehicles crashing before they could display their skills.

    1. Re:Are they doing this wrong? by Dun+Malg · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I think that everyone that considers to participate in this has to think about what their technology will be used for. 'saving lives on the battlefield' also mean 'being better at killing the target for the attack' and lets face it, not all attacks made are good(tm) ones.

      The military wants robotic vehicles for unmanned transport of supplies, primarily. They're not developing killer robots, nor do they have any reason to turn this into a weapons system. Humans are by far the deadliest and most effective tools the military has for killing other humans. It's one thing to oppose this because it's funded by the DoD, but it's not a weapons system and probably never will be. Robots are too easily out-thought by humans.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  2. Re:An idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I guess you could do better? Oh, I forgot, this is slashdot, everything is easy...and if you fail you are stupid. Look, the best team broke an axel which caused them to stop. I bet you would have a hard time driving that course yourself. Have you ever driven somewhere where breaking an axel is a hazard? This isn't like your daily drive to work. Oh, and the CMU team drove ~3000 miles across the US in '94. I guess we should all just give up since nobody completed the course though...

    If it was easy, idiots like yourself could do it, but it is hard so it will take a few tries to get it right.

  3. Hamstrung Technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    DARPA has been funding development of this technology for many years. The Grand Challenge was designed to expedite the process by placing a seemingly large sum on the table for the winner. They, however, have chosen to not allow any previously government funded software.

    While that levels the playing field for all the teams, it certainly does not represent the state of the art in autonomous robotic software that has been developed under DARPA's own contracts in the past. Many of the complex image understanding algorithms for road operations, obstacle avoicance, terrain classification, etc. have required millions of contract dollars to develop. This is far in excess of the prize being offered for the completion of the GC.

    The repeat teams will certainly have a development advantage because the bulk of the necessary work is software development and integration not overall vehicle development. Most of the critical algorithms already exist but cannot qualify because they were developed under DARPA (and other government agencies) contracts.

  4. Re:Fun fun fun. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    From the article, someone has to read it...

    "The route (see definition, p.28) will be no longer than 175 miles. It may include paved roads, unpaved roads, trails, and off-road desert areas. The route contains manmade and natural obstacles, both above and below the surface of the average terrain. Examples of obstacles include ditches, washboard, sandy ground, standing water, rocks and boulders, narrow underpasses, construction equipment, concrete safety rails, power line towers, barbed wire fences and cattle guards. Every obstacle on the route can be either traversed by a commercial 4X4 pickup truck or avoided entirely. DARPA will place on the route one or more obstacles that are designed to disable tactical vehicles. These obstacles must be detected and circumnavigated for a vehicle to successfully complete the route. The route will be wide enough for vehicles to bypass these obstacles."

    Still think this is easy? If someone can't make a robot to navigate this they are stupid? By that standard nobody is smart, except you of course...

  5. Re:Why robot cars? by Mr_KnowItAll · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Autonomous aircraft are possibly easier to build than land vehicles (note: neither are "easy"), but they really don't solve the kinds of problems that the Grand Challenge is supposed to focus efforts on. Surveilance applications are fairly well developed using airborne platforms, but moving a large payload by air just doesn't have the cost per pound per mile advantage of a ground vehicle.

    Autonomous ground vehicles are needed to get people out of the supply logistics roles that are inherently hazardous. Force protection options for a convoy of trucks are limited and mostly unchanged since the military started using motorized vehicles. Since there's no way to circumvent the ground transportation requirement, the best option available is to develop automation to keep people out of the inevitable ambushes.