DARPA Grand Challenge 2005

fishdan wrote to mention that the Darpa Grand Challenge is getting underway again. The qualifying rounds started yesterday. National media has picked up on the story, with pieces at the Washington Post and Seattle Times. From the Post: "The autonomous robotic vehicles began competing Wednesday in the first of a series of qualifying rounds at the California Speedway. Half will advance to the Oct. 8 starting line of the so-called Grand Challenge. The grueling, weeklong semifinals are designed to test the vehicles' ability to cover a roughly 2-mile stretch of the track without a human driver or remote control. Participants ranging from souped-up SUVs to military behemoths will be graded on how well they can self-drive on rough road, make sharp turns and avoid obstacles _ hay bales, trash cans, wrecked cars _ while relying on GPS navigation and sensors, radar, lasers and cameras that feed information to computers."

Comments

Finally...

[evil agent]

...we're putting the "auto" into automobile.

I for one am very happy to see this technology advancing. It's not gonna take much intelligence to make an autonomous driver better than most human drivers.

This is very cool

[zappepcs]

The software and use of sensors, as well as the sensors themselves are being driven to places that they probably wouldn't have gone if not for this contest. Sure, the 2 million dollars is a big-ish prize, but bragging rights are bigger.

I've seen some hobby roboticists building smaller robots for a scaled down version of this that are just amazing. Even on smaller scales, this is pushing technology. The good part? Much of the hobby stuff is pretty much shared in an OSS kind of way. That means that the technology behind all this will not belong entireley to the military, and will soon find its way into our vehicles and homes.... THAT is very cool!

This is not true AI

[MOBE2001]

Did AI research implode for lack of funding, or is it really that hard?

None of the competitors are doing true AI. They are not using learning systems as far as I know. This is just good old fashioned programming where the designers/programmers try to think of all possibilities in advance. I don't see how this contest is advancing our understanding of intelligence. I think that the qualifying rules should have been more stringent and should have prohibited non-learning systems. Otherwise it's the same old traditional stuff.

Re:This is not true AI

[Zathrus]

By not requiring learning systems, DARPA is not encouraging progress in AI

Since visual perception and interpretation is often considered an AI related field of research, I'd say you're wrong.

But, more importantly, you still don't get it. The GC's goal isn't to encourage progress in AI -- it's to develop an autonomous supply vehicle. Do you have any idea how much of the military is involved purely in transport/resupply?

The US defence department would sell its soul for a truly intelligent system and that's what we should be after.

Funny. That contradicts a rather large number of public statements from the DoD. And privately I suspect the more sane individuals don't want it either -- we've seen more than enough SF flicks that go into the potential issues with such a thing.

include big-city driving in the challenge

Yes, and we should make all toddlers learn to run before walking or crawling.

It's called incremental progress -- right now the DoD could benefit immensely from a fully autonomous transport vehicle that simply goes between depots in low traffic but highly rugged environments. After that you could look at highway driving (which is already being worked on by all the major automobile companies) and then maybe high-traffic conditions. But that last one is of relatively little use to the DoD, and DARPA is only mandated for Defense related projects.

As it stands, all we're gonna get is clever engineering which we already know we're good at, but not good enough.

When it comes down to it, it's all just "clever engineering" -- especially in retrospect. Most progress is made in small steps, not giant leaps.

What about negative space?

[Druox]

Has any of the contestents overcome the obstacle of negative space (i.e. a cliff, a sudden drop, a crater)?
Its easier to detect something that is there like a bale of hay by radar, but what about something that isn't there (isn't an object sticking out of the ground, in y+ axis)? If not, I can see alot of Wile E. Coyote incidents with these cars flying off cliffs.
(**poof**)

Autonomous cars and traffic jams

[GuyMannDude]

I for one am very happy to see this technology advancing. It's not gonna take much intelligence to make an autonomous driver better than most human drivers.

The benefits of having cars that drive themselves will be enormous. First, these cars can be programmed to drive in a manner that conserves gasoline (e.g., no jack-rabbit starts, limit speeds to 55 mph, time their accelerations between stoplights so they don't have to come to a complete stop at every one). Second, cars that drive themselves in a rational manner -- instead of the emotional, irrational manner that people drive them -- can significantly reduce traffic jams. There is an insightful analysis of traffic jams at this page which explains that jams are larely the result of people not letting other people merge into their lane coupled with the relatively-slow reaction time of humans. Cars that can synchronize their motion in relation to nearby traffic could make traffic jams a thing of the past.

Not to mention that if the car drives itself, I can read slashdot on the commute home (or watch Natalie Portman movies).

GMD