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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?
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!!"
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)
"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
Fukengruven!!
= Grow a brain...
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
*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?
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
What the deuce? I've been driving around in a Jetta Wagon TDI for two years. The only reason we got a Jetta TDI instead of a Passat is that the Passat isn't available with a manual transmission.
Golf, Beetle, Jetta, Passat, Toureg are all available with TDI engines. Try em out, but the waiting list is pretty lengthy because they are selling like freakin' hot cakes.
My wife and I keep our TDI pumped with biodiesel too. Less emissions, less smell, and our gas was living plant material mere years (or months) ago. Staying in the current carbon cycle is better than releasing carbon stored millions of years ago.
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!!!!!
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 . . .
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)
`autonomous ground vehicles that will help save American lives on the battlefield.'
Wouldn't it be easier to just stop invading other countries?