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Stanford's Stanley wins DARPA Grand Challenge
tonyquan writes "DARPA has just announced that Stanford's "Stanley" autonomous ground vehicle has won the Grand Challenge, a $2 million contest for driverless vehicles over a 132 mile course in California's Mohave Desert. Stanley's winning time over the course was 6 hours, 53 minutes and 58 seconds, for an average speed of 19.1 mph. Second was Carnegie Mellon's Sandstorm (7:04:50), third went to another CMU vehicle "H1ghlander" (7:14:00) and fourth to the Gray Team's KAT-5 (7:30:16) More info from DARPA."
Less than 20mph in an SUV through the desert. These Robot control cars are worse than my Grandmother on an interstate.
Quite clearly these Robot controlled cars are part of a sophisticated plot to increase the amount of road rage in the US to enable the Robots to take over the country... and then the world.
It is not too late to stop them, we must insist that the next competition involves only Ford Broncos and takes place on the Freeways of Los Angeles during rush hour.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
While I'm happy that these hard-working academics were successful, I can't help but note the downside to this development.
Forget military applications. What I foresee is that, for computer scientists who've lost their jobs to outsourcing, this will deprive them of one more alternative, namely a career as a taxi/truck/bus/etc driver.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
Darpa has just announced? I read this in my morning paper (in the UK) several hours ago.
"Drivers unnecessary"
And, most of them were pretty close time-wise. The winner was only about 10 minutes or so ahead of the 2nd place finisher. From zero to five competitive finishers...of course all of these results will only be put to peaceful purposes. Isn't Darpa like a branch of the Peace Corps???
-A
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Being funny is my sig nature.
a $2 million contest for driverless vehicles over a 132 mile course in California's Mohave Desert.
The car is powered by 7 Pentium M laptops. No drivers? Are the laptops running in Safe Mode? Ah, that explains why its average speed is 19.1mph.
w00t
I can already imagine the following scene:
You: *steps in car* "Drive me to uncle George?"
Car: "Why do you want me to drive to uncle George"
You: "Because it's his birthday, dammit. Now start driving!"
Car: "You seem to be a bit angry. Where does this anger come from?"
You: "Start DRIVING you gas-guzzling piece of shit!"
Car: *accelerates to 100mph* *dumps core*
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What gives?
Obviously, an infusion of alien technology must be involved. There is no other explanation.
"Our Germans are better than their Germans."
-- The Right Stuff
I bet the advertising guys didn't have this in mind.