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DARPA Challenge Prize Money Restored
antispam_ben wrote to mention that, some three months later, DARPA has been able to find the money to offer cash prizes once again. The DARPA Urban Challenge will go forward next November with more than $3 Million on the line. From the article: "The race will see as many as 90 teams 'drive' an unmanned robotic road vehicle through city traffic, competing to finish a 60-mile course within six hours. Set for November 3 of next year, the challenge will call on robots to safely obey traffic laws, negotiate busy intersections, merge into moving traffic, avoid obstacles and navigate traffic circles. DARPA has yet to disclose the race location, but has said it will be in the western United States. The government research group didn't unveil the 2005 Grand Challenge location in the Mojave Desert until weeks before that race, in order to avoid giving any team an advantage."
I wonder who's going to be driving the other cars? In the previous races, the robots were traveling through a closed course with no traffic.
I sure hope it's a closed course, because I'd hate to be t-boned by an errant robotic Touraeg.
DARPA San Andreas baby!
Actually, what I meant to say is that I'll be playing San Andreas in the automated vehicle while it safely navigates traffic--something I can no longer do after playing the GTA series. It is just too tempting to run down pedestrians and try to steal nicer and faster cars!
Will additional points be awarded if they successfully navigate the LA aqueducts, find Sarah Conner?
navigate traffic circles.
No American is going to win this one...
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
but, while as a software engineer and electromechanical hobbyist I fully appreciate all the challenges involved with these robotic drivers, I'm just not impressed by systems that have courses plotted into them and use GPS and high resolution maps and intimate fore-knowledge of the landscape, etc. As a driver, -I- don't need that fore-knowledge to get from Sacramento to Manhattan - thousands of miles successfully navigated without any more fore-knowledge than that I have to travel generally North East through many states.
I will be impressed when driving automation systems can start with a general idea of where their source and destination locations are and can read the signs to figure out how to get there. They must use perceptive powers to avoid colliding with other drivers or running down pedestrians and following the rules of the road instead of range finders and lasers and GPS-based speed limit adherance and other such nonsense.
Until the system can be boiled down to a pair of eyes and a pwerful set of smarts driving , in my view, it's just an elaborate obstacle course being followed by the likes of this robot. I understand "baby steps", but "they" tend to avoid tackling these big challenges and instead continue to focus on these contraptions that just, plain aren't smart enough.
IMHO, of course.
They didn't need everyone from the last challenge to have finished it. They only need one.
The fact that they got four finishers last time means the cross-country technology works. Now that removing the remaining bugs and improving cross-country technology is just a matter of time and money they can move onto the next step: urban driving.
I know you are just kidding, but if you think about it, robotic driving is not rocket science, exactly.
If you think about it, all the robotic drivers in computer games such as Grand Theft Auto are pretty damn good, and can follow rules and stick to routes much better than their human opponents. So, driving/navigation algorythms have been developed a decade ago, all they need is a good way to recognize their surroundings.
With this in mind, this whole driving challenge is a problem no different from OCR or voice recognition.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
When I was 18 and knew everything, I used to think everything was easy also.