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DARPA Grand Challenge Teams Submit Videos to DARPA
doughnuthole writes "The deadline for DARPA Grand Challenge teams to submit their videos to DARPA just passed and some have posted them online. Some of the teams with these videos posted are Team Caltech, Axion Racing, Virginia Tech (on the Media page), Insight Racing, and UMass Dartmouth. The Grand Challenge is a 175 mile race run by fully autonomous vehicles. Since no teams completed the 2004 race, DARPA decided to run it again, this time for $2 million."
One of my buddies is on one of these teams (which will remain nameless). According to him, one of the major problems last year was the enormous amount of time spent on sensor and hardware development vs. the incredibly small amount of time spent on software development and testing. When you have an autonomous vehicle with great realtime terrain mapping capabilities, but with no collision detection code (!), you get a hunk of metal with great vision that likes to run into the same bush over and over again. Other teams did have collision detection in, which would back the vehicle up when a potential collision was detected. However, the vehicle would pick up too many potential collisions (lots of bushes and rocks in the desert) and continously back up! Just goes to show you that developing the algorithms for these things is pretty important. Let's hope they get it right this year... although the chances are pretty slim.
http://www.stackworks.net/TASVCD.mpg
It takes an amazing amount of work to get to even this stage, but we're making very fast progress.
We're a new, entirely student run team with a very limited budget, and always looking for sponsors. If you know anyone who can provide money, equipment, supplies or other assitance, let us know!
I had hopes for the DAD team. They have a simple and robust sensor suite.
Their problem was they had to halt their vehicle to allow the officials to tow one of the challengers out of the way. And when they restarted, their front wheel was stuck on a rock. Their software wasn't smart enough to gun it and get over that small obstacle. Must have been frustrating not to be able to kick that damn rock out of the way. Up to then they were looking good.
I think this is pretty cool and all as an engineering effort, but what specific purpose does this have?
Autonomous dump trucks with carrying capacities of 100+ tonnes of ore have been in use in open pit mining operations for several years now. At the moment, it's complex and expensive to set up the control systems for them. More intelligent operation with lower start-up costs will definitely interest the big mining companies.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
It's interesting, 50 undergrads took the course in 2003 at Caltech that did technology surveys for the vehicle, and there are about 1000 undergrads at Caltech total. So, 5% of the undergraduate population took part ...
Yeah, kind of how the ARPANet was designed to kill people more efficiently.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert