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DARPA Grand Challenge 3

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the robot-cabbie dept.

Meostro writes "DARPA announced the 3rd "Grand Challenge" today, The DARPA Urban Challenge. "To succeed, vehicles must autonomously obey traffic laws while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections and avoiding obstacles." This year's new twist is two tracks for entry: the first is the same as the previous two challenges (develop on your own without Gov't. funding), but the second involves "submitting a detailed proposal for up to $1 million of technology development funds." Here is the PDF press release ."

2 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. My Dissapointment in DARPA by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Insightful
    As a tax paying citizen of the United States, it sure is frustrating to try to find the results of DARPA research.

    Yes, they do research in defense but shouldn't there be a little more than a tiny graphic or blurb about what work they're doing? Couldn't they at least take the time to write an abstract or 1-2 page paper with unclassified information on each project?

    Instead, I find the following links in the 'Archives':
    My alma mater has produced better papers than this in these fields. I know that a lot of this stuff isn't classified and they list their programs on their sites, why can't they do a better job in showing the American public what they've done with our money?

    The Grand Challenge Forums are flooded with only vendors. Where are the designs and reports by the teams from older Grand Challenges? Why isn't this structured more like RoboCup where the learning algorithms are released every year so that future contestants can build on this?

    The fact that this contest isn't run in a more open way makes it seems like less of a "contest" and more of a "do our research for us!" kind of thing.
    --
    My work here is dung.
  2. Re:Whilst I understand.... by GoatMonkey2112 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are an awful lot of streets that do not have white lines, or have cars parked on both sides so that there is really only 1 real lane for traffic even though its a 2 way street. What does it do when it reaches an obstacle that avoiding it requires you to break the rules?

    You would needs some serious AI and pattern recognition to really replace drivers. There is just too much that can go wrong.