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The European Grand Challenge
An anonymous reader writes "A European version of the DARPA Grand Challenge is being held in Germany next month. Instead of a race through the desert, the EU challenge is split into three events. Urban, non-urban, and landmine detection will be the 'courses', with multiple winners in each event. Interestingly Sebastian Thrun, winner of last year's Challenge, has been forbidden from taking part despite being a European citizen." From the article: "The trials will take place in and around Hammelburg, a mockup of a town used by the German military for training exercises. In the non-urban course the robots will have to contend with a one-kilometer route containing ditches, barbed wire fences, cattle guards, fires, narrow underpasses, and inclines of up to 40 degrees. The urban and landmine 500-meter trials will require the robots to negotiate doorways, stairs, partially collapsed buildings, and poor visibility from smoke or partial lighting. Along the way, they will also have to search for designated objects and report their findings back to base."
In light of this, I've begun working on my European citizenship so that I can enter a remote control car strapped to a camera.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
A friend of mine, an officer who is currently serving in the US army in Iraq, came with me to the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. His response to the whole event was "Hell, I don't need robots that can go 150 miles. I need robots that can go 100 yards." What he meant was that he wanted a robot capable of going a short distance that could detect/disable IUDs and mines. That's a pretty risky endeavour for a person to do.
The Dude abides.
Or could it be, I don't know, that the Europeans feel a bit uneasy with such a commercially and strategically important piece of infrastructure in U.S. hands? Funny, it's almost as if they don't trust the USA.
A few years ago, I doubt this would have been so much of a concern. But in recent years, the U.S. has belittled Europe as irrelevant ("Old Europe"), openly mocked countries that disagree with us, put aside the idea of pursuing international consensus in favor of a "We can do whatever the hell we want" foreign policy, and taken an increasingly hostile stance towards the rest of the world ("You're either with us or against us" for instance). The Europeans are asking whether we can really be relied upon to act as their friends- and rightly so.
hmmmm... could it have something to do with the fact that the USA has the ability to shutdown, jam, or otherwise incompasitate any technology that uses the US GPS system? I mean, if you really think about it, would you ever base any of your own military systems on something that you know another country can shutdown?
I mean it is just plain idiotic for them to not create their own GPS system if they want to use the full capabilities out of it. Otherwise piggy-backing on the US system is just begging for problems if it ever was a critical part of they systems (nothing like having a GPS guided missle told that the location it was aimed at is the launch vehicle itself...).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Or it could just be that both sides are pointlessly bashing each other because things are failing at home/abroad. Europeans are also guilty of pointless America-bashing.
The US is involved in a stupid, pointless contest to see how many lives they can destroy while wasting huge amounts of capital and international goodwill. Capital that could be going to ensuring that Americans remain competitive in the global marketplace etc. And of course when someone mentions that the neocons accuse the person of being "French" like that is an insult. Enough, it is pointless and counterproductive.
Meanwhile, Europe is spinning around in circles and can't decide what it wants. You want the Euro to be the worlds new reserve currency? Say goodbye to your manufacturing sector. But Europe seems to want to have it both ways. On one hand they are screaming about free trade on the other they are blocking Chinese imports. They want to be seen as the land of tolerance and yet the European immigrants(most of whom weren't supposed to be immigrants, they were supposed to be "temporary guest workers" and should have gone home by now, but nobody in Europe likes to admit that) find it much more difficult to integrate into society compared to the US. Not to mention as a whole the EU birth rate is 1.5 children per woman(the only country that comes close to replacement in western Europe is France at 1.9), so the demographic mess Europe is going to be facing will be horrible, but nobody seems willing to do anything about it. They seem to prefer bashing Americans because that is easier than solving problems.
Meanwhile Asia's economies are ramping up and ready to destroy the economies of Europe and North America. I'm an American living in Germany and my plan now is to go home, get a masters degree while America's universities are still worth something, and study my ass off to learn Korean.
The west is dooming itself. If Europe and America really want to thrive in the upcoming century, then they really should be working together. While most hate to admit it, they have similar cultural backgrounds. The economies of both nations are much more alike than the economies of say Europe and China. And they are both facing some of the same social problems, most notably the aforementioned aging population problem. They should be cooperating instead of bickering like children, but as politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have shown, bickering is much easier than humility and doing something....
But, that is just me talking.
Monstar L
Just because we don't want to be baby-sitted by the US all the time, doesn't mean we want to stab you in the back. And yet, your kind are the same people who later complain that europeans are lazy because america does all the military spending.
Why is a GPS specifically so sensitive to americans? You could say the same thing about the a number of other things as well:
Oh, you don't need your own Jet Fighters, look we've built several great ones already.
Oh, You don't need your own armies, we have military bases all over Europe.
Oh, you don't need a voice in the world, we already have a fine president.
In the minds of many americans it seems that "allied countries" means "enslaved countries" that do everything the Pentagon wants when they want it. Or else their nation is reduced to a common insult or worse.
Noone elected your country as the leader of the world. You are self-appointed. And realize that after rebuilding from WWII, Europe is capable of much more than being americas satellite states.