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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."
...without people! Gotta love that.
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.
Yes it is as far as I remember. Actually, one of my friends was telling me they're writing software to give the car the ability to powerslide.
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
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.
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
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.
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
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?
You've clearly never driven off-road. Indeed, with your statement that somebody could average 68 MPH in terrain like this demosntrates that you've probably never raced in your life, either.
Even in relatively benign terrain, a speed of about 15 MPH is actually moving pretty quickly. These aren't $2M one-time-use lightweight 500HP Paris-Dakar desert racers with a navigator, an 8-ton supply-laden chase truck. These are extremely heavy fully autonomous machines. If you read the rules, they're even supposed to refuel themselves without human intervention should it become necessary. It's really, really easy to break stuff at only 15 MPH, particularly when you consider how heavy these robots are.
Also, the paved sections are very short -- I haven't looked at the 2004 course in quite awhile and I'm not sure if the 05 proposed courses are up yet, but it was something like only 10% of the entire route -- and then you're not permitted to exceed the speed limit, which I think was pretty low -- 50 MPH or thereabouts.
It's very, very hard.
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.