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Stanford and Volkswagen Create Autonomous Vehicle
nght2000 writes "Stanford University has created an autonomous driving robot to compete in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge Race. The race will be held on October 8, 2005 in the desert Southwest. The team that develops an autonomous ground vehicle that finishes the designated route most quickly within 10 hours will receive $2 million. The route will be no more than 175 miles over desert terrain featuring natural and man-made obstacles. The Stanford Racing Team's vehicle is a Volkswagen R5 turbo diesel Touareg that was donated by Volkswagen of America. The Stanford Team has been working with the Volkswagen Electronics Research Laboratory on the project."
My lego mindstorms vehicle can beat this car any day! Except maybe on sand dunes, but oh wel.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the bona fide leader in this competition the Red Team from Carnegie Mellon?
...without people! Gotta love that.
Just when you thought it was safe to cross the street...
I only did some roadmapping for CMU. Outside of creating true artificial intelligence, only luck can win this goal. You map a route then calibrate your GPS, and hope the vehicle can stay on the road you drew, and hope it doesn't hit any obsticles in the way.
God spoke to me.
The course is specifically designed to defeat the gps+road map method of solving the puzzle.
It is guaranted that the vehicle has to pass through a tunnel or other type of obstruction that disables GPS.
Also, it is guaranteed that all roads will have obsticles at random locations that must be avoided. I understand that there are points where the vehicle must do an obstacle course and avoiding it or jumping over it is banned.
Bulk purchases of these robots, modified for high-speed runs of less than 30 minutes, is under consideration by Domino's Pizza.
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
The team that develops an autonomous ground vehicle that finishes the designated route most quickly within 10 hours will receive $2 million.
Considering no vehicle has made it more than a couple miles in these races before, I find it pretty funny that they include the "finished most quickly" bit. If anyone could finish at all it would be a huge leap forward. Some of the footage last year was pretty amusing. One in particular I remember was a big SUV looking vehicle that was really moving, made it about 2 miles before it got stuck. Seems to me they'd be better served if they laid off the emphasis on speed for the time being and just got to the point where a sharp turn can be safely negotiated.
Evil will always win, because Good is DUMB
Driving a 4WD in a desert, with obstacles and detours, arriving at a destination within a time limit... I dare say not every human driver is up to the task. And they want to achieve this with a computer?
I wish I had more, but I kinda ran out of gas. Really I should have hit the brakes after the first one, but once I'm in gear I can't stop until I crash and burn.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
And anyway, wouldn't a robotic vehicle be more likely to run into pedestrians like school kids?
Only if Grand Theft Auto was pre-installed.
What slashdot really needs is a +1 *Groan* Mod, but I suspose you'd need to do some work under the hood for that. Someone should really get in gear on this.
Crap....
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
Hopefully, if I ever get to work on one I'm going to program everything we know about Darwinism into the thing.
I think you should base the first robotic vehicle that can repair itself on an old Beetle. I think I could train my dog to change the cylinders on one of those.
Ha, I am going to enter my Jetta which will be piloted by my Robosapien that I picked up at Best Buy. It'll blow that Touareg out of the water!
Herbie Rides Again
This sig is intentionally blank
I was driving through campus near the Stanford Golf Course the other day and saw a robotic solar vehicle emblazoned with the Google and Stanford logos. There was a large van outfitted with all sorts of sensors and gadgets on the roof and hood. Has anyone heard of Stanford attempting to build a robotic solar-powered car too?
I do like programming things that work super quickly, especially when they work super quickly, super quickly.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Didn't VW do an autonomous vehicle back about 1970 (in association with Disney)
It would be kinda' ironic if it crashed into a tall tree, then got broken into by a bear during it's journey.
I do like programming things that work super quickly, especially when they work super quickly, super quickly.
"There are passengers and there are drivers. Drivers not wanted."
As someone who went to CMU, I'm of course rooting for the home team, but it is fun to read about the other guys. For the on-road stuff, they had those trucks zipping driver-less, pretty fast, through Schenley Park back in the 90's, so it'll be interesting to see if they can keep on the trail this time for the off-road challenge.
E pluribus unum
See you folks at the race.
-Cornell
Show me a computing power that enables you to run over skunks versus kids. If you see a kid, you look into the mirror, and brake enough. The car on the back brakes enough but hits your bumper anyway, broke it, you get out of the car, and it's just money. But you saved a kid. If the same thing happens with a skunk, how're you gonna feel. Or if you're following a robotic car and it brakes suddenly, and you didn't brake or steering away fast enough and smash your head in the windshield~.. hmm
Which seems weird, as China has more humans to use as soldiers than anyone else.
Fukengruven!!
= Grow a brain...
with the advent of HIV and all
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
One of the advances that would be a lot more likely once this is done is: Flying Cars.
The biggest complaint against flying automobiles is how every-one (and their dog) would be able to drive (fly) like a bat out of hell. Literally, in this case.
So, get autonomous driving working, get people used to it on the ground, then going airborne is just a next step.
I cried when I saw how the DARPA desert race was done. I was thinking vehicles actually had to do pathfinding, you know, like, interesting stuff.
Thats simply not the case. DARPA hands out the final destination a day before launch and the teams madly scramble to find a route to send their vehicle down (on nice sat photos). Then they send the vehicle off on its own. What sort of fun is that?
Knowing this, I'm ashamed how poor last years competition was. The winning team was pretty sweet, but I certainly expect a lot more competitive entries this year. Hand most any college worth its salt $25,000 and let the CS & ME's go to. In a year they should build something which could at least contend with the DARPA incumbent.
As it stands the whole thing requires almost no intelligence. The whole point, from a computer engineers' biased persepctive, was to get people building robots aware of their surroundings. The Berkeley city auto-mapper robot is a perfect example; couple that with Sandstorm and then maybe I'm interested. But so many teams can make a robot which FAILS to track a GPS path while staying moderately on the road is just beyond me.
I understand the whole point is that the terrain is supposedly "hostile"... But when you're driving an `86 Hummer, its quite apparent that any area full of enough dangerous terrain to give you a problem will likely be seen on the sat-maps.
Myren
Hey, VW, how about making diesel cars available in the US instead (I mean not just Golf and Beetle)? With the prices we're paying for gas right now, they'd sell like freakin' hot cakes.
*Remove tinfoil hat*
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
I dont understand why their team is getting this much press, other than the fact that Volkswagen's PR dept is probably hyping stanford to get some marketing exposure for their company, as this year almost 200 teams applied to get site visits.
In terms of technology, well, outside of the Turing test, this is sorta like the Super Bowl of AI. My team/part of the project dealt with Machine Vision, which has proven to be quite difficult for a lot of people (including me!). Real time scene analysis is *very* computationally expensive, and you have to make guesses and inferences as optical signal data fluxes around constantly, a lot of the time completely rendering your approach useless.
Even though from life experiences I know that Life Isnt Fair, and the playing field is never level, some of these teams get insane advantages. I wont even go into CMU (ok, I will: they have basically Defense Contractor backing, parts, and consultants, and like 7 million dollars to spend on the project), and here stanford has sponsorship with volkswagen. I was suprised Cal Tech didnt get more major sponsors, but they might have for round 2 of the challenge. No one has near the advantage of CMU though, their main LIDAR cost more than a lot of people's whole car/setup.
Aside from that, for me this project has been a blast. The work, needless to say, is very unique and its almost like a mini-1960's space race, "first one to the finish line!". Its funny how some people try different angles, spend millions of dollars, and then get foiled by a rut in the road that hangs their car up (I'm tellin ya, if the sun shifts even slightly all vision input outside of lidar can basically go to sh!t if you arent careful, and if your lidar doesnt pick it up, well...)
Regardless of whoever makes it to the top 30, it will be interesting to see if anyone finishes this year. Darpa3, maybe?
Oh shit, the car ran over a bunch of people. Must self-destruct to remove any evidence!
If you say so. Would you kindly tell me, first, how you "change cylinders", short of replacing the entire block? Or was it pistons you meant?
Um, no. I am too lazy to google you up a link, but the Volkswagens of old (i.e. the "Bug") had a motor where the cylinders screwed into the crank-casing. You could remove any one of the four cyls, head and all, extremely simply.
Most modern engines do not have the same design or construction.
The waypoints are given to each of the teams something like 3 hours before the beginning of the race. My school's team then takes the CD and puts it into the onboard computer system which then does everything. Certain other teams have (in the past :) simply used the time to specify an exact course themselves, resulting in little useful technology for the military like you said. Our vehicle staying within 20 cm of the computed path, mostly due to the actuators because the vehicle was built by us as opposed to bought from a company that makes remote control drones for the military. While this would undoubtedly have been easier the point of the class is for the students to learn, not to put all the effort we can into winning the DGC.
-Random Caltech Student (and the other team I mentioned not so positively is CMU, but feel free to correct me on anything).
Parent is a troll but I'll bite: http://www.stanfordrejects.com
Well, it looks like the Americans are using the Germans again.
No doubt the Germans can provide the engineering skills required - they did for the Apollo project. But what happens when the Germans go home?
I suppose you may have been joking or trolling, but just in case -- there is a remote-kill and all vehicles are continuously monitored by event organizers (e.g. not the team itself, who might take advantage of their proximity to cheat). There are guidelines for things like maximum deviation from pre-planned corridors, etc. (These are quite wide and by design involve a lot of unfriendly terrain -- it wouldn't be possible to do simply exploit the existence of these imaginary corridors as a navigation aid).
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
For starters, when you're driving off-road, 17.5MPH *is* pretty fast. Go rent a 4WD Jeep one day and find yourself some wide open terrain and see what kind of speed you can average. You can easily brake axles and half-shafts even at only 10MPH in vehicles of the size and weight typically represented here. On top of that, unless you're spending big bucks on high-end racing grade drivetrains, a 4WD system isn't going to last 10 hours at that kind of speed. Be sure to read the manual in that Jeep you rent -- even in 4-high you can't exceed about 20 MPH, and shouldn't run it at that speed for any period of time. (Most full-time 4WD systems are not designed for off-road use beyond "the dirt road down to the campground" sort of thing.)
Oh wait a sec...
yet no-one thought to put in something that will do something like:
Damn, I wrote all of that before I realized you're just a troll.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
...at least they'll be able to do a quick search and find it easily if it gets lost and goes missing!
Your link is misleading. It a depressingly standard report on human rights abuses in China and says nothing about robots.
China has the largest infantry in the world, they don't need robots.
I find it laughable that all these automakers and sinking millions of dollars into taking driving out of the hands of Americans. Are they looking to get their asses shot? It will never happen. If people wanted to be able to read the paper while driving, they would ride the bus. Americans think seat belt laws infringe on their basic rights and freedoms, a no steering wheel law, now that's something worth launching a few missles over.
Well! If this robot as the same electrical wiring as all the north americain volkswagen made in mexico! he's not gonna make it at all!!!!!
It's a good thing, given they are using a Volkswagen, that part of the criteria for winning isn't being able to autonomously open or close the likely non-working power windows.
--- What?
They could have chosen a better make of car. My 2002 GTI likes to melt fuse boxes. Let's just say VW wouldn't be my top choice for autonomous vehicle.
it's interesting to compare this team to the single high school kid profiled on, i believe, this episode of "the science of star wars" on the discovery channel. he appeared to be building everything himself based on an a.t.v., but i missed some of the beginning.
In addidition to convenience, autonomous, or even street-directed, vehicles could nearly eliminate the problem with DUI.
With smart streets, traffic control could also be much improved, with, for example, the freeway directing vehicles to shift position slightly for injection of merging vehicles.
Speeds could be significantly increased, and vehicles could be placed on bulk carriers (e.g., trains).
With good enough control and timing (many years after initial introduction), vehicles could be sent through intersections in the holes in cross-traffic . . .
t there are points where the vehicle must do an obstacle course and avoiding it or jumping over it is banned.
.
Swell.
*Now* what am I supposed to do with this JATO unit?
I suppose that I could mount it in the back of my father's old Chevy wagon . .
hawk
there are passengers, and there are drivers. And there are vehicles that don't want either.
Great. That's just great.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
When they dumped "Indians," the administration supressed the overwhelming first choice in the student vote: "Robber Barons."
.
Apparently, checking your sense of humor and history at the door is a requirement to be an administrator there, too . .
hawk
You are thinking of watercooled engines. The VW Type 1's engine was aircooled -- the cylinders stick way out of the crankcase in open air and have fins all over them. They are just stuck into holes in the crankcase and bolted down. It's much more like an aircraft engine, at least in this way.
Path optimization has very little to do with it, fuel economy aside. The travelling salesman problem doesn't deal with salesmen breaking their legs by walking into ditches, does it?
"How do I get there efficiently, given that I can see the whole area from above" is not nearly as interesting, in this application, as "what is that in front of me and what do I do about it?"
I'd love to be able to do that too. The only problem is the way our society works, its quite likely that employers everywhere would contractually oblige you to spend those hours doing work!
I couldn't find Toureg with TDI in WA a couple of months ago. I doubt it's available now either.
I'd say it was pretty obvious that your mathetmatical wizardry was not in question. The trolling started when you, some random-wanker slashbot, is going to come up with the Secret Ultimate Solution to Grand Challenge Success with one line of pseudo-code that eluded the entire CMU team for an entire year.
Kudos. You are a master of robotics and engineering.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Thanks, I obviously didn't know that. I knew the VW didn't use water cooling, but clearly know nothing else about the engine.
why doesnt someone enter a walker? they entered a bike so number of wheels is not an issue. 6 legs move one at a time. even a speed of 3 miles an hour would make it more successful than any of the wheeled entrants, much more stable, spiked feet (its not like damaging the road is an issue) with enough weight behind them should do it. funding would be the problem here but im sure someone entering has the cash.
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
now thats what I'm talking about! thanks for the linkage.
;)
I think Berkeley might have an edge in this one.
-Myren
`autonomous ground vehicles that will help save American lives on the battlefield.'
Wouldn't it be easier to just stop invading other countries?